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Aesthetics and the Management of Heritage

Dates
Thursday, July 10, 2025 - 09:00 to Friday, July 11, 2025 - 16:30
Location
Churchill College, Cambridge

The past lies all around us in the form of monuments, buildings, and other forms of tangible heritage. Occasionally, we are forced to make choices about the future of such heritage. We might need to decide whether or not to arrest the decay of the object; or what to do with it in the face of complaints that it celebrates injustice; or whether or not to let it stand in the way of a commercial development; or, if it has been damaged, what to do about that damage. There is a rich history to such discussions, including contributions from Petrarch, Alberti, Viollet-le-Duc, Morris, Ruskin, and Riegl.

This conference is dedicated to exploring the role of the aesthetic in such discussions: to what extent should the aesthetic value of such objects play in part in our decision-making?

Register for this event via Eventbrite

British Society of Aesthetics logo
Sponsored by the British Society of Aesthetics

Thursday 10th July

09:00
09:20
Tea and Coffee
Welcome
09:30
Radu Bumbăcea (LMU Munich)
‘The Affective Basis of Architectural Conservation’
10:30
Madeleine Page (Leeds)
‘Digital Preservation of Material Artworks as a Solution to the Problem of Conflicting Conservation Methodologies’
11:30
Break
12:00
Helen Frowe (Stockholm)
TBC
13:00
Lunch
14:00
Camilla Palazzolo
‘The Aesthetics and Historical Dimensions of Contemporary Art Conservation’
15:00
Zoltán Somhegyi (Szeged)
‘Sitedness and Its Implications for the Aesthetics of Heritage’
16:00
Break
16:30
Lisa Giombini (Roma Tre)
TBC
17:30
End
Conference dinner from 19:30

Friday 11th July

09:00
Tea and Coffee
09:30
Manuel Martin Gallardo
‘The Funerals of Art: Aesthetics and the Management of Cultural Heritage’
10:30
Robert Bevan (London)
TBC
11:30
Break
12:00
Salvador Muñoz Viñas (Valencia)
TBC
13:00
Lunch
14:00
Sukhvinder Shahi (Arizona)
‘Monutainment: A Commercialised Aesthetics of Monuments’
15:00
End
The wrecked remains of a coach
Ruined coach at the National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan, 2007

Organisers

Derek Matravers, The Open University.

Keynote Speakers

Robert Bevan, Author, London

Helen Frowe, Professor of Practical Philosophy and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Scholar at Stockholm University.

Lisa Giombini, Research Fellow and Assistant Professor of Aesthetics, Roma Tre University.

Salvador Muñoz Viñas, Professor at the University of Valencia and Director of the paper conservation group of the Valencia Conservation Institute.

Zoltán Somhegyi, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Szeged.

About the Venue

The venue is Churchill College, Cambridge. Limited accommodation is available onsite, at a price range from £85 to £90 per night for a single room. Information about how to book rooms will be emailed to you after registration.