A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace by Lynn Meskell
Best known for its World Heritage program committed to "the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) wasfounded in 1945 as an intergovernmental agency aimed at fostering peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding. Its mission was inspired by leading European intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, and Aldous and Julian Huxley. Oftencritiqued for its inherent Eurocentrism, UNESCO and its World Heritage program today remain embedded within modernist principles of "progress" and "development" and subscribe to the liberal principles of diplomacy and mutual tolerance. However, its mission to prevent conflict, destruction, andintolerance, while noble and much needed, increasingly falls short, as recent battles over the World Heritage sites of Preah Vihear, Chersonesos, Jerusalem, Palmyra, Aleppo, and Sana'a, among others, have underlined. A Future in Ruins is the story of UNESCO's efforts to save the world's heritage and, in doing so, forge an international community dedicated to peaceful co-existence and conservation. It traces how archaeology and internationalism were united in Western initiatives after the political upheavals ofthe First and Second World Wars. This formed the backdrop for the emergent hopes of a better world that were to captivate the "minds of men." UNESCO's leaders were also confronted with challenges and conflicts about their own mission. Would the organization aspire to intellectual pursuits thatcontributed to the dream of peace or instead be relegated to an advisory and technical agency? An eye-opening and long overdue account of a celebrated yet poorly understood agency, A Future in Ruins calls on us all to understand how and why the past comes to matter in the present, who shapes it, andwho wins or loses as a consequence.
Location: Mugar Off-site Storage: sign in and request to pickup only at Mugar, Science, Pardee, or Education Library AS4.U83 M47 2018
The AAM Guide to Provenance Research by Location: Mugar Stacks N3999 .Y45 2001Publication Date: 2001
Art Market Research: a guide to methods and sources by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013Chapter 9: Provenance and Art Law Research
Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legacy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2009
Cultural Property Acquisitions: Navigating the Shifting Landscape by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Art and Archaeology of Afghanistan by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2006Contributions from archaeologists, linguists, and lawyers.
