Authenticity and historic preservation: towards an authentic history

Abstract

Authenticity was neither an exclusive criterion nor even a keyword in the rise of the historic preservation movement before the heated controversies over `Heritage' beginning in the late 1960s. Both advocates and critics have tended to ignore or oversimplify an actual history of non-dogmatic but not at all unprincipled reflection, analysis and professional practice. From the writings of Alois Riegl and Camillo Boito around 1900 through ongoing debates over the ideal of authenticity put forth by the Venice Charter of 1964, this history represents a major and an authentic contribution to understanding the values, possibilities and complications of preserving the past.

Negotiating Authentic Objects and Authentic Selves

“…The Nara Conference was at the heart of a flurry of debates in the mid 1990s, and is regarded as a turning point in approaches to authenticity in mainstream heritage conservation and management (McBryde 1997;Starn 2002). The main impetus stemmed from a concern that the concept of authenticity underpinning the World Heritage Convention privileges Western, monumental forms of heritage, and predominantly those constructed with stone.…”

Keeping it real? Subcultural graffiti, street art, heritage and authenticity

“…In its sensitivity to cultural diversity and specificity, the Nara Document also highlighted a shift in heritage concerns 'from ancient monuments to living cultures' (Jokilehto 1998b, 17). The tension between the Venice Charter's appreciation of tangible authenticity and the Nara Document's focus on intangible authenticity, however, remains rooted in contemporary heritage debates and can be connected to the fluctuating popularity of conservation and restoration as notionally binary heritage procedures (Starn 2002). This tension is significant when considering subcultural graffiti's potential to represent heritage.…”

“…Paradoxically, however, the use of each of these frameworks may have implications which question the established notions of authenticity that remain fundamental to modern heritage practice, and lie 'at the base of all modern doctrine on the conservation and restoration of historical monuments' (Lemaire cited by Starn 2002, 2). Despite authenticity's deep philosophical genealogy (Jokilehto 1995) it was not explicitly connected to the preservation movement until the early twentieth century (Starn 2002), and only became a decisive factor for heritage practice in 1964, when the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter) recognised a duty to preserve monuments 'in the full richness of their authenticity' (ICOMOS 1964). For the Venice Charter, authenticity was vested in the physical fabric of monuments and sites, and it therefore emphasised conservation on a permanent basis, guided by the principles of interventional transparency and the use of traditional techniques.…”

Let fragments speak for themselves: vernacular heritage, emptiness and Confucian discourse of narrating the past

“…It is through the discursive practice of 'what people tell each other about their past; about what they forget, remember, memorialise and/or fake' (Harvey 2001, 320), that 'heritage' is constructed as an object of knowing in cultural, leisure, tourism and academic practices. Starn (2002), by turning to the discursive dimension of 'authenticity', argues that the concept emerged from the preservation movement in modern Europe. The idea of conserving cultural heritage in terms of 'material authenticity' is criticised by Lowenthal (1998, 20) as being a sign of cultural imperialism that 'leave[s] other cultures and traditions ill at ease, [for] they place more emphasis on spiritual values, on authenticity of thought, than on material symbols.'…”