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?
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.
Frank Lloyd Wright finally makes World Heritage
His younger contemporaries Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier got there first, but Frank Lloyd Wright, the most influential American architect in history, finally made the UNESCO World Heritage List. As a Board Member of the Frank Lloyd Wright .Building Conservancy, I am very pleased that the long-awaiting recognition came today in Baku, Azerbaijan. A total of eight works were included, including Unity Temple in Oak Park and Robie House in Chicago.
The inscription of Wright’s work took almost 20 years, twice as long as the effort that saw the San Antonio Missions inscribed four years ago. Two buildings originally proposed, the Price Tower in Bartlesville, OK and the Marin County Courthouse in California were dropped as the nomination was extensively revised.
The selected sites do reflect Wright’s genius, from his pre-World War I Prairie period that gave us the incomparable Unity Temple and Robie House, through his California textile block houses (represented by the Hollyhock or Barnsdale House) and his mid-century Usonian style that began with the Jacobs I house in Madison Wisconsin.
The inscription also includes both of Wright’s sprawling “schools” – Taliesin in Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Arizona, where his apprentices learned for over 20 years.
And of course, Wright’s famous “comeback” building, Fallingwater, is included, where he ditched the idea that he was a 19th century architect and cemented his reputation with a building that not only balances above a waterfall and integrates with the landscape, but becomes a landscape. Wright loved nature and his gift was not simple integrating buildings with nature, but allowing buildings to be inspired by nature, designed by nature, so that they elevated and improved the landscapes they occupied.
Wright’s early apprentice Barry Byrne said Wright only needed to sketch plans and elevations, because he could think in three dimensions. When Ken Burns did that documentary on Wright, even his needling adversary Philip Johnson admitted that Wright could imagine space in a way few mortals can.
The recognition is long overdue, but well deserved. For decades I have said that Unity Temple is one of the best buildings in the world. I lived less than a block from it for a dozen years and my children grew up with it. There is no question in my mind that it belongs in the company of the Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat.
Finally!
My Favorite World Heritage Sites Vol. 4.
So, more favorite World Heritage sites I have visited. And before you get too jealous, look at some of the places I have NEVER been and think how many World Heritage sites are there:
Egypt
Greece
Turkey
Denmark
Belgium
Brazil
Almost all of Africa and the Middle East
I still kick myself that I didn’t make it to Borobodur in ’86, and I was only 90 minutes (but no car) away from the most excellently named World Heritage Site of all in 2015:
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. That’s in Alberta, Canada and it was inscribed way back in 1981.
My favorite World Heritage Sites Vol. 1
If you wander back through the dozen years of this blog, you will encounter a fair range of World Heritage Sites. Since 1972 UNESCO has inscribed more than a thousand, a significant number of which are “cultural heritage” sites. Continue Reading
Stepping Into World Heritage and Why
It has been six years since I wrote about stepwells, those amazing structures found throughout the Indian subcontinent. Communal water sources, stepwells range from simple community structures to elaborate complexes replete with stunning architectural detail. When I wrote six years ago I described the Adalaj stepwell in Ahmedabad, but I only included a single image, so I am remedying that here. Continue Reading
Cultural Landscapes: The Confluence of Conservations
we could all use some of this
I have blogged previously about the differences between natural area conservation and heritage conservation, especially in terms of use-value, as I wrote about last year in this blog. The basic point was that natural area conservation is largely about preserving non-use value – a liability (or at least an externality), while heritage conservation is about preserving use-value – an asset.
That blog also delved into the 41-year history of World Heritage, which includes both cultural, natural and “mixed” sites. I detailed how we had shifted in heritage conservation from iconic and monumental singular sites to broader cultural landscapes. In recent discussions with conservation foundations, I am sensing a new confluence of heritage conservation and natural conservation as both approaches are moving into the arena of cultural landscapes. Continue Reading
Libya 2013
Everywhere you look in the Old City of Tripoli you see banners and flags of the new Libya, red, green and black with the Islamic star and crescent. There is a vibrant market here, perhaps more vibrant because the banking system remains dysfunctional some 20 months after the successful revolution that overthrew Moammar Gaddafi after a 42-year long dictatorship. The market also reveals the manifold diversity of Libyan heritage and identity: people from every part of the world who have come to this southern Mediterranean trading port for perhaps three thousand years: from Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, Sub-Saharan Africa, Arabia, Byzantium, Egypt, Turkey and more. Continue Reading
World Heritage City Chicago
Last Saturday, Irena Bakova, Director-General of UNESCO, was in Chicago for a meet-and-greet with local heritage conservation professionals, and last night ICOMOS Director Gustavo Araoz spoke as part of the Chicago Modern: More Than Mies series, presented by the Save Prentice Coalition of AIA Chicago, docomomo Midwest, Landmarks Illinois, The National Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Chicago. Both talked about Chicago’s singular architectural legacy and suggested that Chicago would be an ideal World Heritage city. Continue Reading
Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat
I realize of course that I am quite blessed to be able to visit Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat with the first two months of the year, two stunning experiences in the realm of historic buildings and the remnants of ancient civilizations. Continue Reading