AI Slop
The phrase “AI Slop” is already commonplace, and it inspires me to invent more neologisms like “Cry me a data center” or “Grok willing and the creek don’t pop-up”. I have written all 670 blogs over the last two decades without AI, or have I? I am a late-adopter with Post Technology Stress Disorder and you can see that in my blogs from the aughty-aughts. Heck, you can see it from a couple of months ago when I ranted about how real retail service companies cannot ever, ever change an old email or recognize a different phone number, no matter who is dead. And they are willing to give up months of revenue just to carry that rotting corpse further.
So what do I think of AI? My first reaction to AI writing was that it was like a 14-year-old who has been asked to turn in a three-page essay but only has one page of material. Repetitive. You see it in tons of social media posts which look like proper long-form discussions but hammer the emotional hinge of the story like six times in 400 words. That is the written version of the AI image that has the wrong number of fingers or arms. Of course, both of those examples are a year old so I suppose by now AI is like 15 and knows how to draw hands better.
This is a real life photo from 12 years ago no AI.
I have attended one workshop and one training in AI in the last 24 hours so here is what I learned, mostly from Huy Pham and Paul Kim, whom I first saw present on this issue almost a year ago in Arkansas.
AI is a marketing term for the latest iterations of pattern recognition technology. Basically it looks at large amounts of data and identifies patterns and recurring themes. So, like you learned in computer science 40 years ago – GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Huy and Paul work for APIAHiP (Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation) and if they ask AI about Asian sites in the National Register of Historic Places and if AI looks at all 100,000 nominations and sees less than 1% it will tell you basically NO. There aren’t any. Not significant. Not important.
Since AI is basically pattern recognition, everything it produces will tend toward the mean, the median, the average and ordinary. It is not a place to look for exceptionalism or new ideas. Culturally, it has a flattening effect. What is new about it in the last few years – as opposed to the pattern recognition software of 20 and 30 years ago – is the Large Language Model. Basically you give it tonnes more examples. So it gets even meaner. It cannot provide conclusions, only predictions. It reflects what is common, not what is true. Garbage in, garbage out.
I guess I’m not a big fan
If you want the National Register of Historic Places to identify underrepresented stories, you need to do it yourself, because it requires not lots and lots of old data, but a new approach. You need to reconceptualize the process, which is not something in AI’s wheelhouse. Garbage in, garbage out.
“Hallucinations,” however, are in AI’s wheelhouse. They will confidently answer a nonsense question like “Who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1956?” and even provide fake citations from nonexistent journals, as we have seen recently. It seems the AI doesn’t know how to say “I don’t know” which is a prerequisite of real intelligence. It eagerly answers queries because – like the 14 year old – it can’t not. Even if it is hallucinating.
If you get the “Nobel Prize in Economics,” you will get it here, in Stockholm, but it will actually say Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, and it only began in 1969. Four of the five original Nobel prizes are also delivered in Stockholm under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will, with the Peace Prize awarded in Oslo.
Presents predictions as conclusions. Repeats what is common rather than what is true. Hallucinates.
No wonder the predator class and the oligarchy are so enamored of it.
More microdosing and unlocked tranches than Sand Hill Road.
So, does AI work with historic preservation? I have always said that the beauty of historic preservation is that it treats every resource as an individual, with individual characteristics and individual significance that cannot be commodified. Zoning treats properties as a category, like grain being graded and loaded into a silo. It becomes a commodity sans terroir. Pattern recognition technology might be suited for zoning or other commodifying tasks, but telling the story of a place is specific and nonfungible.
Terroir.
So, to answer the question: AI can help if you need to find out how many 1926-29 Tudor Revival houses in the Monte Vista district have casement windows or how many National Historic Landmarks are shaped like elephants.
But if you are nominating a site with a story that has not been heard before – AI doesn’t know. Because it hasn’t been told. And it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know.
Why doesn’t someone get AI to do the dishes or wash the floor? Something useful, you know?
Authenticity after 60 years
In my investigations over the last 15 years into the limitations of the National Register of Historic Places I often suggested the use of “authenticity” instead of “integrity” in judging whether a property qualified for listing. In creating the National Register in 1966, U.S. heritage experts had chosen to go with “integrity” instead of “authenticity” which was more common internationally. Integrity is more mechanistic, and defined by architecture, which makes sense given the heavy influence of architectural practice on the U.S. preservation movement from the 1930s through 1960s. In dealing with the broader range of heritage sites in the 2000s, I thought deferring to “authenticity” could help address the diversity deficit in the National Register of Historic Places. You can see my 2016 blog about integrity and authenticity here.
Now that we are more than 60 years removed from the Venice Charter of 1964, it is interesting to note that “authenticity” has itself undergone a transformation away from a formalistic architectural definition and toward ideas of heritage as defined by the communities who steward them. To quote from the most recent World Heritage discussion of authenticity:
“Over time, the understanding of authenticity has undergone significant evolution from a
material-based notion to a pluralistic, functional, traditional, spiritual, intangible, culturally
relative and value-based concept, reflecting the diversity of human societies, the different
ways in which heritage is created, used, and remembered, as well as reflecting the
evolution of the notion of heritage.” Authenticity in the context of the World Heritage Convention: Evolution and Impact, 25th Session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, November 2025.
This is similar to what I have been saying in presentations and book chapters since 2010: Heritage conservation is a four-step process of Identifying, Evaluating, Registering and Treating historic resources. Heritage conservation happens when a community determines what elements of its past it wants in its future. As noted in the Burra Charter, the community whose heritage is being conserved needs to be involved in each step of the process – Identification, Evaluation, Registration and Treatment. If we bring community into the process too late, or if we assume as professionals that we are better qualified to Evaluate or determine Treatments, we will come up short. How you conserve Mount Taylor and how you conserve a Victorian house museum are not equivalent.
Mount Taylor, NM last month.
Villa Finale, the month before
Authenticity received its first definitional challenge about 1980, just a few years after the operational guidelines for World Heritage were established, following Western architecture-based practice that focused on design, materials, workmanship and setting. That challenge was Warsaw, Poland, completely rebuilt after World War II thanks to precise documentation done forty years earlier. The materials and workmanship were not authentic. But it was extremely important to the community. The next challenge came in 1992 when Japan brought with it an understanding of the integrity of process, rather than product. The Shinto temple is a thousand years old even as it is rebuilt from scratch every twenty years, because the tools and craftsmanship are one thousand years old.
Meanwhile in the West, we see no problem restoring an 18th century house with epoxy, nail guns and other tools and techniques that did not exist at the time, because we revere the object more than the process.
The shift toward a more holistic – and genuinely international – approach began with the Nara Document on Authenticity in 1994. To the original four aspects of authenticity were added form, substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location, and spirit and feeling. The key idea was that authenticity had to be defined within a cultural context. And while that definition is not universal, the process – Identify, Evaluate, Register and Treat – is.
Another 30 years has passed, and authenticity has continued to evolve. By the 2000 expert meeting at the Great Zimbabwe, authenticity was linked explicitly to living traditions, stewardship and ritual. Many cultures do not place as high a value on material remains as they do on speech, memory and community values. In May of this year, the International Conference on Cultural Heritage in Africa: A Dialogue on the
Concept of Authenticity was held in Nairobi, Kenya discussed how African heritage is dynamic, community-centered, and deeply rooted in both tangible and intangible values. A similar discussion is planned for Southeast Asia.
The other problem, as you might imagine, is that “authenticity’ has no equivalent in Japanese, Arabic and certain African languages. Different societies conceive of continuity, value, trust and authority in different ways. As the document notes, the challenge may be existential: How do you ask for proof of Outstanding Universal Value if values are culture-based and not universal?
Deconstruction and the weird 80 years
I saw a wonderful presentation by Mae Bowley at the Destination Downtown 2025 conference last week in El Dorado, Arkansas. Deconstruction is the systematic dismantling of older buildings in order to re-use their materials. San Antonio adopted one of the best deconstruction ordinances in the country a couple of years ago and Stephanie Phillips and the rest of Shanon Miller’s team got plenty of kudos.
Opening of the Material Innovation Center at the Kelly Bungalows in November, 2022.
Mae’s presentation was electric for many reasons, but the one that stood out to me was the historical one. Deconstruction is not a new thing – it is what everyone everywhere did until about 1940. Only during the last 80 years did we do something different. That different thing was demolishing buildings and throwing them in the trash. No one did that before.
And Mae provided another historical tidbit I had missed completely. Mechanical demolition with bulldozers and the like was a product of World War II, where those machines were needed to clear jungles for airfields or urban debris for troop advancement. Urban renewal started immediately after World War II, and all of a sudden we had new mechanisms – like bulldozers, which derive from tanks – for reshaping place. Urban renewal continued through the 1960s and the National Historic Preservation Act is traditionally seen as a reaction to urban renewal and interstate highways, which required the bulldozing of many, many buildings.
Now, I was aware of the economic shift that took place during this same weird 80 year period. In the early 20th century and before, buildings were commonly moved and reused. Heck, I have seen a significant building moved in San Antonio every year over the last decade. When that happened in 1900 – and it happened everywhere – the economic rationale was simple. The fixed asset of the building was worth more than the land. Even when places like Euclid Avenue in Cleveland saw demolition of mansions, it was because a new use – industry – was MORE valuable. Same in LA circa 1915.
Moving the 1880 Claudius King house in San Antonio, 2019.
Mae even illustrated the long history of deconstruction when she illustrated the deconstruction she did of a 1920s house. By the time they got under the sheathing and onto the walls themselves, they found evidence of earlier materials that had been reused. In other words, the deconstruction revealed evidence of earlier deconstruction.
Which made me think of buildings around the world built from materials scavenged from other buildings. Like this Jacobean house constructed from the stone of Fountains Abbey (Yorkshire, UK) after the dissolution of the monasteries.
Or this mosque in Delhi (India) composed of the ruins of a couple dozen Hindu and Jain temples.
Or, like, most of Rome. Or even like our San Antonio Missions, whose limestone and sandstone walls migrated over the decades into nearby buildings.
The Sisson House near Mission San Juan – this house was itself a deconstruction project last year.
Deconstruction of the Sisson House at Graf and Presa, October 2024.
Mae also spent a lot of time talking about wood – because deconstruction allows you to get some old-growth wood, which is not something that exists in the market in 2025. Old growth wood is straighter, more disease and rot-resistant and has a tighter grain. It is one of the most notable materials that can be easily recycled (once you pull the nails out). Brick, too. When I started in heritage conservation in 1980s Chicago I saw that even then demolition sites would save the Chicago brick and “send it to the South”. When I got to San Antonio in 2016, I finally saw a building made of Chicago brick. In 2009.
Also it is Ladino one of the best restaurants at the Pearl – where they re-used EVERYTHING.
I looked back and it seems I blogged about Deconstruction in 2009 and was pretty negative – I compared it to the difference between recycling and reusing. Recycling requires a lot of energy and produces a lot of waste compared to reuse. I can reuse a bottle by cleaning it, but to recycle it I have to grind it up and remelt the glass. But what I did not realize at the time was that deconstruction is something we have been doing since we first made cities and towns. And it makes sense – why should the landfill get all of the good wood?
World Heritage Center – 10 years of World Heritage in Texas.
In 2015, the San Antonio Missions were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, becoming the only World Heritage site in Texas and making San Antonio one of three U.S. World Heritage cities. I celebrated this event in my blog at the time – not knowing I would move to San Antonio a year later. I had made a point of touring the missions carefully in 2010, and I am pleased that my blog from that visit remains accurate. I still tour them – took three visitors out last week. Never boring. This is a landscape with deep cultural resonance.
Mission Espada at night.
Last week, the City of San Antonio’s World Heritage Center opened near Mission San Jose, and over 500 people turned out to celebrate. The Mayor said the turnout was twice what they had for the new airport terminal! San Antonians LOVE to celebrate culture. A lot of those in attendance were Mission descendants whose families have been here for many, many generations.
The effort to achieve World Heritage status began in 2006 at a Conservation Society Board Meeting when it was suggested by former President Virginia Nicholas. Soon the Society had engaged the services of author/historian Dr. Paul Ringenbach, who wrote and rewrote (and rewrote) the World Heritage nomination. Experts were brought in and we coordinated with World Heritage USA (then called US/ICOMOS).
The inscription took nine years from start to finish, but that is actually pretty quick in World Heritage time. The Frank Lloyd Wright sites also began to work on World Heritage inscription in 2006, but did not achieve it until 2019 – four years after San Antonio. I did not move to San Antonio until 2016, but having spent years working on World Heritage sites worldwide, and having toured the missions in detail, I was excited and impressed. Which is why I blogged about it. I’m still impressed.
The new World Heritage Center has a screened veranda by Adriana Garcia that takes its motifs from the flowers, waterfowl and nopales of the San Antonio River. The interior features specially commissioned works of art and provides many layers of people-based interpretation. Many Conservation Society leaders are included in the first exhibit area, which focuses on the voices that helped make this special place happen. A large video details not simply the significance of the mission in world history, but the experiences of those who have lived here for generations and generations. Indeed, a “gift box” exhibit focuses exclusively on the voices of the mission descendants.
Unlike many World Heritage sites, the San Antonio Missions are not archaeological ruins. Not only are all five mission churches still extant, but four of them are active Catholic parishes! While the mission walls have vanished at the Alamo and Mission Concepcion, they survive in part at the other three missions, having been rebuilt at Mission San Jose 95 years ago. The landscape is still there, with two of the mission acequias still operating as working irrigation systems.
Labores at Mission San Juan, last week. Irrigated by an acequia built in the 1740s.
Most importantly, the people are still there. And they are at the center of the exhibits in the new World Heritage Center. At the opening, many wore badges identifying them as mission descendants, and throughout the exhibits there are opportunities to hear and see their stories. In the missions the indigenous Pajalache and others joined with the Spanish Franciscans to create a confluence of cultures that is legible to this day.
Even the preservation history of the San Antonio Missions goes back a century! The first item that the Conservation Society purchased in order to save it was the embossed wooden door to the Mission San Jose Granary, which you can see on display at the Mission today. We saved it 99 years ago, in 1926.
From a preservation point of view, the Missions are a lesson in persistence. The ladies of the Conservation Society managed to purchase and restore the Mission San Jose Granary (above) in the early 1930s. This led to the reconstruction of the entire Mission San Jose complex and to the Archdiocese deciding to restore the church, which had been without a roof for a century.
The Conservation Society persisted. In 1941 the four southern missions became a State Historical Park thanks to our efforts. In 1978 the Conservation Society lobbied tirelessly behind the scenes to get the missions listed as a National Historical Park. In 2006 we led the World Heritage effort. That is persistence.
Besides persistence, the other word I keep coming back to when I think about the missions is partnerships. How do you get entities as diverse as the National Park Service, Archdiocese of San Antonio, City of San Antonio, Bexar County, State of Texas and at least four not-for-profits (Conservation Society, Mission Heritage Partners, Los Misiones and the Alamo Trust) to work together to create a singular World Heritage Site? Partnerships. And practice. San Antonio has been practicing these partnerships for most of a century and the Conservation Society has been at the center of it the whole time. You can see the annual reports of this multi-level partnership here.
Matachines celebrating the Virgen at Mission Concepcion, 2017.
The Cult of Mithras
When I traveled to Rome thirty Novembers ago I saw many wonderful historic sites and artifacts and artworks but one that made a particular impression was a mithraeum, or “temple” to the cult of Mithras, an early competitor to Christianity. The mithraeum was located beneath a medieval church in Rome. Indeed, many of the hundreds that have been discovered are beneath churches, and while Mithraism and Christianity competed in the realm of eastern-oriented mystery religions from the 1st to 4th centuries, Mithraism was suppressed along with paganism after the 4th century.
Gathering places of the Mithraic mysteries have been found from England to Hungary and the cult was a particular favorite of the Roman military. The basic worship was of Mithras, a sun-god borrowed from Persian mythology, and the key image was Mithras astride and slaying the sacred bull. This bloodletting offered salvation to the participants in the rituals, which included a ceremonial breaking of bread and wine and a promise of resurrection. Mithras is always wearing a Phrygian cap.
So, what was trending in 1st century Rome? Basically, eastern mystery religions, and you had two big choices. The first was Christianity, originally a Jewish sect that had taken a more Catholic approach and had established major centers in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. Part of its appeal was monotheism. One can imagine that the pantheon of traditional Roman gods was becoming a bit outdated in a globalized Mediterranean world. Part of its appeal was its Orientalism. The mysteries of the East were borrowed and reimagined. It also offered eternal salvation thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who died for the sins of others.
The second choice was the cult of Mithras. It was also assembled from pieces of eastern mythology, including an adapted Zoroastrian Mithra and an adapted and adopted Osiris, the Egyptian god of resurrection. The rituals included a kind of agape, or ceremonial meal which struck contemporary Christians as a direct copy of their eucharist – complete with bread and wine. They even called the clerical officials “pater” (Father) and their altar illustrated the bloodletting that led to salvation.
So, which to choose? Well, there was one other aspect of Mithraism, and that was that it was male-only. Very popular with the military. In contrast, the early Christian church not only had female martyrs like Perpetua and Felicity, but was often spread – especially among the upper classes – by women. Constantine had his Helen in the 4th century, Augustine his Monica in the 5th and Volodymyr had his Olha in the 10th. Since its founding, more women than men have attended church, While excluded from clerical positions in most cases, women religious have always outnumbered men.
Sta Maria Maggiore, Milano.
One of the biggest challenges that Christianity presented to Roman Mediterranean culture was its focus on mercy and universal salvation. This ran completely counter to Roman ideas of justice, which admitted no humility, no mercy and certainly no forgiveness. In contrast, the message of Christ WAS forgiveness. It made no sense to Romans. For those initiated into the cult of Mithras, your hero and god was depicted literally in the act of killing something. (The technical term is tauroctony)
Mithraea offered resurrection, a full dose of eastern mystery, complete with a Phrygian cap, a ceremonial bloodletting, a meal and best of all – no girls. You could have your eastern mysteries without the kind of radical inclusion the Christians were preaching.
Ironically, once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity, the religion of mercy apparently showed none to the Mithraites and their theology of cruel justice.
San Antonio Update September 2023
Here is the Sommers saloon as it looked 2 months ago, then a month ago, and now.
Which is sad, and saving the stones is not true preservation. But it is puro San Antonio, because this is a place where preservation of something is the first thought, even if that is preservation by relocation or reconstitution. You can argue that those are not true preservation solutions, and you would be right. But in this city, landfill is never the first option. The plan is to have some of the best architects in town re-use the old limestone and caliche for a new development.
I continue to worry about the Hughes House, 312 W Courtland. We worked to save it and found two willing buyers a year ago. They did landmark it and get a zoning change for a wine bar, but vandals/obdachlos broke in last winter and now it is for sale again. In addition to its architectural beauty, it was the home of Russell Hughes, known as La Meri, whose dance was internationally known.
This is when 503 Urban Loop burned in February 2022 on the coldest night of the year. The building was a very famous brothel and then spent a century as Catholic institutions helping women and children in the impoverished Laredito district of San Antonio. We worked with Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and Westside Preservation Alliance to landmark it and were delayed again and again until it burned. Now, the purported developer of an 8-story building there is selling the site. The landmarking process is supposed to insure three things:
- Archaeological investigation of whole site
- Preservation of any items recovered at a local museum
- Permanent interpretation visible from the public ROW.
Will they do it? And who is they? The new owners or the ones when it was burning? Stay tuned!
To address the surfeit of accidentally burned buildings, the City Council yesterday expanded the Vacant Building program beyond historic districts and upped the fines to $500 a day. Now maybe those Austin developers will modify their tactics. But there is still a lot of charcoal in the landscape.
Much of the carnage happens in the area just north of downtown and west of the Pearl, including the Tobin Hill Historic District. Basically everything not in that district is a candidate for demolition. The latest attempt is an interesting ensemble of five Victorian buildings that feels like a little historic district. The trick is that only two are landmarked. Can you guess which?
If you guessed Numbers 1 and 3 you are right! But they really do look like a district. Let me show you the rear building that they also want to demolish.
So this is another interesting development strategy. Pick off the buildings one by one, so that the context is diminished and you can start arguing that there is no “there” there.
I think the Folk Victorians at Number 1 (210 Lewis – not landmarked and slated for demolition!) and Number 2 (215 Poplar, landmarked) are pretty cool, and 225 Poplar (not landmarked) has that impressive double porch with Classical details. Again – stay tuned!
It will be a busy fall – November 1-3 we are having a World Heritage Symposium which will not only recall our status as one of only 25 World Heritage sites in the US, but also recall the UNESCO San Antonio Declaration of 1996, which was the Americas’ response to the Nara document on Authenticity in 1994. Together these statements led to the community- and culture-focused approach to heritage conservation that has characterized all the advances in our field in the 21st century. It is called Affirming Cultural Identity: World Heritage in the 21st century (nice title if I do say so myself).
Baguettes and Zoom
The ubiquitous French baguette was inscribed as Intangible Cultural Heritage this week, and our reaction must be: Why did it take so long? It has been nearly 30 years since UNESCO adopted the Intangible Cultural Heritage convention and started cataloging music, dance, costume, food, crafts and other elements of cultural heritage from across the globe. One would think the baguette would be high on the list but at least it takes it rightful place next to couscous, Turkish coffee and Belgian beer. Oh! And slivovitz, the plum brandy often central to Passover, just got listed as well.
For the second Fall in a row, I have been teaching a Zoom course to UTSA Architecture students on World Heritage Management. I have had the good fortune to have some great guest speakers – Dr. Paul Ringenbach, who wrote the World Heritage nomination for the San Antonio Missions, Christine Jacobs, Superintendent of the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, and Nada Hosking, my former colleague and Executive Director of the Global Heritage Fund.
It has been fun to teach again after a decade-long break, and I am impressed by how well the Zoom interface works. Of course, it began due to COVID but it continued because now I can teach from anywhere. I taught a course at UIC in Chicago in the Spring, and I taught two of my UTSA courses this Fall while I was on my Fulbright Specialist trip to Bogotá.
It also allows me to relive many sites I visited and worked at around the world, collecting and reflecting on how heritage conservation happens and what it means for a community’s growth and health. We focus mostly on the cultural World Heritage sites, although several students have done papers on the Natural World Heritage Sites and we did cover Intangible Cultural Heritage as well.
I am impressed with how attentive the students have been and how effective the medium actually is for a class like mine which is essentially a lecture class with a lot of powerpoints – the students presented their own powerpoints on three occasions. I try to keep it interesting and connected with some basic themes, like my bottom line: Heritage conservation is a process that a community used to determine what elements of its past it wants in its future. And how.
The semester comes to an end next week, and I have learned a lot as well as – I hope – shared a lot. You learn by teaching, seeing the connections and themes that emerge even from projects and examples that you worked on long ago. From new questions and old questions (gentrification?) asked again in a new year. The added Fulbright Specialist tour (see previous blogs) added more students and insights to the mix.
Revisiting the Past
While in Bogotá I saw a news article about the Smithsonian Institute returning looted artifacts to Benin in West Africa, part of a growing trend to repatriate historic arts and crafts to the regions they were crafted in. This was of great interest to my students at Ean University, who asked me point blank what I thought about the repatriation of historic artifacts in museums. I said repatriate them. In a world of digital reproduction, museums can easily go back to the plaster casts from whence they came. Location is a key aspect of authenticity.
This reminded me of James Cuno’s book of a little over a decade ago, perhaps the last piece defending the ideal of the encyclopedic museum by arguing that antiquities belong to everyone, not a particular contemporary nation state. Cuno left the Getty this year and now I see that the Getty is hosting a symposium on “The Multiple Reinventions of the Americas in Context,” a critical look at how the “New World” has been conceived and reconceived over the last 500 years. Turns out, I could see much of that reinvention right in Bogotá.
Bogotá has some wonderful historic museums, but what really struck me was their interpretation, which is state of the art. My first visit was to the Museo Nacional, in a former panopticon prison. They have undertaken a reimagining of the museum by abandoning traditional chronology for juxtaposition, putting pre-Columbian artifacts next to telephones under the theme of communication, for example. Objects come alive as you see them simultaneously from the perspective of the colonizer, the colonized, the curator and the curious.
Colombia is a vast and diverse country in both people and geography. Like the U.S. it has Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a wide range of natural and mineral resources, a variety of indigenous groups, a history of African enslavement and a surprisingly long commitment to democracy. All of these themes were explored in the museum, with some clever interpolations by contemporary artists.
There was an exhibit on the history of the building, described as a 19C panopticon prison, and while it was not a true circular panopticon, the suggestion of Foucault and French structuralism was reinforced by the tiny gold exhibit in a literal safe across the way, which had this unexpected text on the wall.
Whoa! I have not seen McLuhan quoted in a museum before, but it makes perfect sense. Where is the medium the message more than in a museum? You are even invited to put your own self and your own culture in the museum.
MUSA, the Archaeological museum, was another example of interpretative elán, sited in one of the oldest surviving houses in Bogotá, from 1738. The collection is primarily ceramics from the many indigenous cultures that inhabited the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts, the three ranges of Andes Mountains, the Amazon and various other regions.
Interpretive text asked us not to see these ceramics as the work of the Other but as human creations that contained foods and sounds. The text asked us further to empathize with each object, reimagining our relationship to our own foods and dolls and musical instruments. The text on the wall urged us yet further to imagine their uses for ourselves without the intervention of the archaeologist or curator. The text was not printed but projected, because the museum is not eternal but fugitive, an incomplete record of an incomplete conversation. The interpretation did not dictate but prodded us to think openly about what we take from the objects presented and how their makers may have experienced them.
The Colonial Museum has the largest task in a time of decolonization, and in many ways did it best. This one was busy, with a conference going on, a massive contemporary art display on the courtyard galleries, and school groups being led with laughter through the exhibitions. Again, there were deft insertions of contemporary art interpretations, but only a few, and their style deliberately played on historic forms and tropes. The best example took familiar 17C images defining racial categorizations resulting from the mixing of Europeans, Africans and Indigenous and then crafted modern ones playing on modern subcultures in a mirror of the antique style.
The opening exhibit sticks primarily to religious and art objects brought to the Americas from Europe as part of the conversion of the population to Catholicism, although almost immediately they give you the artist reimagining the retablo.
The arrangement produced an understanding of the massive effort it took to transport huge numbers of paintings and sculpture to reinforce European traditions and religion. The journey to Bogotá, administrative center of the complex Muisca people who likely numbered a million, took many months both on sea and land. That is a lot of work for a collection of religious items, many quite bulky. I suppose it was worth it to the Spanish crown if they ultimately succeeded in establishing control.
It often takes only a single contemporary image playing with the forms of the historic image to open them up. Here a couple, followed by an artistic interpretation that again plays with racial reversal to make a point and open an eye, not unlike the work of Kehinde Wiley.
They even linked the tradition of saints and martyrs to contemporary martyrs due to the various insurgent groups and narcotraficantes of the 20C. Again, juxtaposition of the old and new offered a view into parallel worlds of conflict, colony and conversion.
These museums were refreshing and interesting, because you looked at each piece longer and had a stronger sense of its purpose and intent than you would have 20 or 50 years ago when it was just another item that was supposed to be beautiful or persuasive. Contemporaneity and criticality opened up the items in new ways, exposing not simply the contradictions of colonialism, but the contradictions of cultural inheritance. You can return a piece from the museum, enacting social justice. Or you can recontextualize a piece, engendering understandings that will support the ongoing pursuit of that justice.
Disclaimer: The blog of Dr. Vincent L. Michael, Time Tells, is not an official Department of State site. The views expressed here are entirely those of Dr. Michael and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or its partners.
My Fulbright Specialist work at Ean University, Bogotá
My two week Fulbright Specialist time at Universidad Ean in Bogotá, Colombia is coming to an end in a couple of days. This has been an excellent experience, thanks in large part to Ean faculty member Juan Camilo Chaves and over a dozen excellent students in Cultural Heritage Management. Thanks also go to Fulbright Colombia, celebrating 65 years, and Paola Basto Castro of Ean’s International program, Sergio Sanchez and Laura Hernandez of Fulbright Colombia and Alejandro Torres of Ean.
First off, Ean has a brand new building with an incredible facade-screen passive heating and cooling system, facial recognition technology to enter and exit the building, and a host of other high-tech items, including a nap room, study rooms with color matched to your study style, etc. Even the old (2012!) building has a green roof of the type we were designing with School of the Art Institute of Chicago students in Lima in 2012, complete with hydroponics, beehives and greenhouses.
My weeklong workshop of five lectures was called “Heritage As Process” and included lectures on the long history of heritage conservation in San Antonio; People and the Preservation Process; Conserving World Heritage; History of Historic Districts and of course the amazing story of the Coalition for the Woolworth Building. I was also asked to have a Q & A with a larger group of student last week, and guest lectured on the San Antonio World Heritage Missions for another class. Tomorrow I will do my Fulbright presentation summarizing this.
So what did I learn, aside from what a modern university looks like? First, I am again lucky to live in a city with a long heritage conservation tradition, because Bogotá seems a bit like Houston or Singapore with endless highrises backed up to the mountains and little concern for the few remaining historic buildings. The students are working on cultural districts, but the idea of historic districts or preservation zones seems to have little traction here.
I visited the house museum of Simon Bolivar, the father of South American independence. It is a well interpreted site set in a lush garden. Especially impressive was the dining room, done in a French style – indeed, due to the timing, the whole place has an Empire feel to it.
Of course the classic tourist visit is a ride up the funicular to Monserrate, the hill above the city. The whole city sits smack dab against the mountains, and of course Monserrate is a pilgrimage route as well, with its church featuring a Christ figure descended from the cross.
I am off this morning to report on my Fulbright Specialist experience! Stay tuned for the next blog on the wonderfully challenging approach to interpretation in the museums of Bogotá!
Disclaimer: The blog of Dr. Vincent L. Michael, Time Tells, is not an official Department of State site. The views expressed here are entirely those of Dr. Michael and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or its partners.
Catedral de Sal: Industrial Reuse
I saw that the famous Battersea Power Station in London has finally been opened, a stunning industrial reuse on a massive scale. As of ten days ago, it is a collection of apartments, shops, restaurants, offices and parks. It is a city within a city. The Art Deco masterpiece by G.G. Scott sat unused for nearly 40 years and went through a plethora of potential redevelopments, including demolition for housing. The rehabilitation discussion has been going on so long I admit I thought it had already happened! The present industrial reuse took nearly a decade. The building was listed (landmarked) in 1980 while it was still operating.
Yesterday here in Bogotá, Colombia where I am a Fulbright Specialist with Ean Universidad, I toured the Catedral de Sal in Zipaquirá and it occurred to me that this was an industrial reuse as well. It is a historic salt mine used since before Europeans arrived and in the early 20th century the idea of building a chapel in the mine emerged from the miners’ devotional traditions. Conceived in the 1930s and built in the 1950s, the chapel was succeeded in the 1990s by the new cathedral, a massive series of tunnels and sculptures that the Colombians have ranked as their greatest Maravilla (wonder). Designed by Roswell Garavita Pearl, the new cathedral is some 500m underground, beneath the level of the now-closed 1950s chapel.
The impression one gets upon entering is that of a mine and the long corridors known as drifts that allowed the extraction of salt. The architecture and sculpture for the most part allows the seams of salt and rock to speak more eloquently than the occasional realist sculpture – indeed sometimes the inserted angels look out of place.
The tour begins with the Stations of the Cross, all fourteen done in an abstract manner whereby a stone cross is set within or without the rock. Here the absence of literal interpretation is a blessing, and the sculptures emerge from the seams of minerals with emphasis and empathy.
The main nave of the Cathedral is actually a triple nave and is preceded by a smaller chapel to the Virgin that includes salt chandeliers.
What makes the main space so effective is again the use of a massive cross above the altar that has the height (50 feet) and depth to carry the colossal space. What struck me most were the massive round columns dug from the salt rock to support the main nave. Again, the most effective aesthetic interventions are those than reference and resonate with the natural mineral forms and patterns.
The only downside (and it didn’t bother me that much) was the fairly extensive collection of shops and concessions down in the salt mine after your complete the tour. Some were obvious, like selling salt sculptures or emeralds or bath salts, but some were almost comically irrelevant, like the King Tut museum.
So what do we have? At the end of the day a very impressive salt mine that is one of the only ones you can visit outside of Poland. It is an industrial reuse that takes advantage of the historic use to create some pretty persuasive artworks that successfully illuminate the heritage of the miners and the religious devotions they brought with them beneath the earth.
This is a creative reuse and has become a massive tourist attraction. I like the latitude given to the intervention. While I loved Falun (a World Heritage strip mine in Sweden) when I saw it in 2007, I find this site a bit more alive, with constant living heritage additions, like the various Virgin icons that continue to be added to the chapel, as noted by my friend and colleague Juan Camilo Chaves.
Disclaimer: The blog of Dr. Vincent L. Michael, Time Tells, is not an official Department of State site. The views expressed here are entirely those of Dr. Michael and do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or its partners.