What are Conservation Ethics?
Many professions have ethical codes. It is quite surprising which professions do not have ethical codes that guide how their members!
Firstly, what is a profession and what is a professional person? A profession is an occupation or job that is recognised to require specialised education and/or training.
Since conservation's emergence during the 20th century as a real field of academic study and professional practice, it has matured and specialised as a distinct discipline built on theory and methodology drawn from both the humanities and sciences. As early as the first International Congress of Architects in Madrid in 1904, numerous attempts were made to codify a set of universal principles to govern interventions to built works of historic and cultural significance. Despite their differences, all these documents identify the conservation process as one guided by respect for the aesthetic, historic, and physical integrity of the artistic work, and one requiring a high sense of moral responsibility.
Cultural heritage is a physical resource that is both valuable and irreplaceable — an inherited common heritage that promotes cultural identity and continuity. As summarized in the Australia ICOMOS Charter (Burra Charter), the aim of conservation is to retain or recover the cultural significance of the thing or place, and it must include provision for its security, its maintenance, and its future. In most cases this approach is based, first and foremost, on respect for the existing fabric, and it involves minimal physical intervention, especially with regard to traces of alterations related to the history and use of the thing or place. The conservation policy appropriate to a thing or place must first be determined by an understanding of its cultural significance and physical condition,
The notion of ethics and ethical practice has long been associated with conservation, perhaps most explicitly in the 1960s with the publication of the Standards of Practice and Professional Relationships for Conservators (The Murray Pease Report), adopted in 1963, and The Code of Ethics for Art Conservators, adopted in 1967 by the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC)-American Group. Since the 1960s several more national conservation organisations in Europe and around the world have adopted ethical guidelines. These can be generalised as follows:
Firstly, what is a profession and what is a professional person? A profession is an occupation or job that is recognised to require specialised education and/or training.
Since conservation's emergence during the 20th century as a real field of academic study and professional practice, it has matured and specialised as a distinct discipline built on theory and methodology drawn from both the humanities and sciences. As early as the first International Congress of Architects in Madrid in 1904, numerous attempts were made to codify a set of universal principles to govern interventions to built works of historic and cultural significance. Despite their differences, all these documents identify the conservation process as one guided by respect for the aesthetic, historic, and physical integrity of the artistic work, and one requiring a high sense of moral responsibility.
Cultural heritage is a physical resource that is both valuable and irreplaceable — an inherited common heritage that promotes cultural identity and continuity. As summarized in the Australia ICOMOS Charter (Burra Charter), the aim of conservation is to retain or recover the cultural significance of the thing or place, and it must include provision for its security, its maintenance, and its future. In most cases this approach is based, first and foremost, on respect for the existing fabric, and it involves minimal physical intervention, especially with regard to traces of alterations related to the history and use of the thing or place. The conservation policy appropriate to a thing or place must first be determined by an understanding of its cultural significance and physical condition,
The notion of ethics and ethical practice has long been associated with conservation, perhaps most explicitly in the 1960s with the publication of the Standards of Practice and Professional Relationships for Conservators (The Murray Pease Report), adopted in 1963, and The Code of Ethics for Art Conservators, adopted in 1967 by the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC)-American Group. Since the 1960s several more national conservation organisations in Europe and around the world have adopted ethical guidelines. These can be generalised as follows:
- the obligation to perform research and documentation; that is, to record physical, archival, and other evidence before and after any intervention to generate and safeguard knowledge embodied as process or product;
- the obligation to respect cumulative age-value; that is, to acknowledge the site or work as a cumulative physical record of human activity embodying cultural beliefs, values, materials, and techniques, and displaying the passage of time;
- the obligation to safeguard authenticity—a culturally relative condition associated with the fabric or fabrication of a thing or place as a way of ensuring authorship or witness of a time and place;
- the obligation to do no harm, performing minimal intervention that will reestablish structural and aesthetic legibility and meaning with the least physical interference—or that will allow other options and further treatment in the future.
