WJLA: Smithsonian hints at reopening of Arts and Industries Building after 15-year closure. “It seems as if new life is finally being breathed into the Smithsonian’s second-oldest building, which has been closed since 2006. On the National Mall, the Arts and Industries Building is nestled between the Smithsonian Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum. A new Twitter account was launched Monday morning.”
Salt Lake Tribune: Digital archive will save memories of the doomed Utah Theater, but preservationists would rather save the playhouse itself. “Virtual-reality tours and 3D scans, drone video footage, watercolors, charcoal sketches and a mountain of historical documents, photos, streetscapes, playbills and news reports are now part of a copious visual and written record. The venerable hall has been damaged and shuttered for years, and the new repository is the public’s most recent glimpse inside. For those who had hoped to save the historic theater, the archive brought mixed emotions.”
CNRS: A Digital Twin for Notre-Dame. “Creating a Google Earth of sorts for the cathedral of Paris, that is the ambitious project of a team of researchers. Their objective is clear: to gather all past and future knowledge about the structure within a collaborative platform.”
The Getty Iris: Getty Will Devote $100 Million to Preserve and Study Ancient Art and Sites around the World. “Today, we at Getty are embarking on an unprecedented and ambitious $100 million global initiative, Ancient Worlds Now: A Future for the Past. Including far-reaching education, research, and conservation efforts unfolding through 2030 and beyond, the initiative seeks to promote a greater understanding of the world’s cultural heritage and its value to global society.”
PaperCity Magazine: Fight to Save Texas’ Endangered Historic Buildings Gets an Instagram Ally. “While neglect and redevelopment are destroying the remarkable modernist architecture in Dallas and Houston at an alarming rate, a new Instagram–based initiative… is documenting the cities’ mid-20th-century treasures in an effort to save them.”
Asbarez: ‘The Christian Architecture of the Levant’ Website Launched. “The initial 3,300 photographs, plans and maps of 118 sites presented on the Website are composed of secular, ecclesiastical and military construction within Turkey, from the Byzantine, Cilician Armenian and late Medieval periods. By exposing this material to the widest possible audience, the donors hope to encourage dialogue, provide documentation for publications, and facilitate efforts for the preservation of these endangered monuments.”
The Conversation: From Shark Bay seagrass to Stone Age Scotland, we can now assess climate risks to World Heritage. “Climate change is the fastest-growing global threat to World Heritage. However, no systematic approach to assess the climate vulnerability of each particular property has existed – until now. Our newly developed tool, the Climate Vulnerability Index, was showcased this week at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. This CVI provides a systematic way to rapidly assess climate risks to all types of World Heritage properties – natural, cultural and mixed.”
CBR: University of Bradford Uses HPC System to Build 3D Models of Lost Heritage Sites. “Archaeology researchers at the University of Bradford are using a combination of crowd sourcing and its first high performance computing (HPC) system to create 3D models of historical landmarks which have been severely damaged or completely destroyed.”
Xinhua: China Focus: Digital technologies preserve cultural heritage in China. “Researchers are using 3D scanners to collect data about the size, color and structure of the Nanchan Temple on Wutai Mountain in northern China’s Shanxi Province. They plan to create a digital archive for the temple, which is the oldest extant wooden building from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) in China.”
Economic Times (India): Heritage gets a tech upgrade: Digital archiving giving Gateway of India, Mysore Palace a new lease of life . “The 3D scan project for the Gateway of India shows how imaging technology is throwing open the portals of history. The advent of superior imaging technology has helped local bodies around the world archive and document monuments, thereby helping in their preservation. Recently, field work was underway at the Gateway of India.”
Ecns: Drones increasingly used to protect Great Wall. “The use of drones helps human inspectors gain a precise understanding of the preservation of the Great Wall at delicate levels and reveals more information on areas difficult for people to access. Yanqing has the most extensive Great Wall elements in the capital city as well as a complete preservation system. Authorities said drones, satellite images and other new technologies will provide the most comprehensive, accurate data on the Great Wall to create a digital archive platform.”
Pacific Standard: Rising Sea Levels Are A Threat To World Heritage Sites. “New research finds that rising sea levels due to climate change will put dozens of World Heritage Sites in the Mediterranean region at increased risk of flooding and erosion—threats many of the sites are already facing.”
Scientific American: Geologists Measure Bullet Damage to Ancient Middle Eastern Settlements. “[Lisa] Mol, who specializes in rock art and rock deterioration, is now spearheading an initiative—the first of its kind—to quantify and catalogue the impacts of bullets in rock at a heritage site in the Middle East. The eventual goal is to inform efforts to conserve or repair such sites.”
Getty Iris: Conservation and Technical Reports for Modern Buildings Now Freely Available Online. “Established in 2014, Keeping it Modern is an initiative of the Getty Foundation that supports the conservation of twentieth-century architecture around the world. Experimentation with materials and construction techniques during this era resulted in great architectural innovation, but they were often untested and have presented complex conservation challenges with age…. Now the Getty Foundation has launched the Keeping It Modern Report Library with the first 20 completed reports, free to download and use by practitioners in the field or anyone interested in cultural heritage preservation.”
Washington Post: The disappearing story of the black homesteaders who pioneered the West. “The physical vestiges of these communities are gradually disappearing. No buildings or markers indicate that black homesteaders once lived at Empire in Wyoming or the Sully County Colored Colony in South Dakota. DeWitty, Blackdom and Dearfield have historical markers, nothing more. A project that I head at the University of Nebraska, working with the Homestead National Monument of America (part of the national park system), is dedicated to creating a digital archive to preserve the memory of the black homesteading movement. But there is an urgent need to save the actual places where so many black people, in the decades after the Civil War, toiled to live and prosper in freedom.”
