Robert Adam Lectures at IHBC Conference

Robert Adam spoke on September 18^th at the conference for the Institute of Historic Building Conservation, presenting the lecture “The Venice Charter and the End of Tradition.” Robert Adam traced the redefinition of conservation through successive conservation charters, suggesting that many assumptions have been gradually absorbed into our policies on the built environment. As a result, our management of historic monuments is driven by an ethos essentially modernist in spirit, being obsessed with historical accuracy and making sure that any extra work on a monument is distinct form the original remains.  

Robert Adam questions if it is right that experts should frown upon conservation methods that reconstruct monuments to look original and supposedly “mislead” the visitor. He identifies key buildings that the public are often unaware are largely reconstructed, but which continually fire the imagination and allow a vivid identification with that heritage. A strictly academic or archaeological approach potentially robs a building or monument of its life, reducing it to a scientific specimen. It therefore contradicts one of the key aims of the conservator, that is to allow the visitor to appreciate the work of art and its character which made it worthy of study in the first instance. Whilst acknowledging the basic tenets of conservation charters, he asks us not to accept their conclusions and methods blindly.