Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
The building housing Cologne's historical archive collapsed on Tuesday 3rd March. While people working in the archive were evacuated, it is feared that some may have been trapped in damaged buildings surrounding the archive. Some reports say up to four people are thought to be missing.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
The University of Southampton will close the Textile Conservation Centre on 31st October 2009. Staff will face redundancy from 1st November 2009.
The centre's supporting trust, the TCC Foundation, has been in discussion for a number of months about transferring elements of the centre's work to Oxford University's School of Archaeology. However, the pressure on creating new student places at the University of Oxford has meant that this plan has ultimately proved impracticable.
Submitted by Graham Voce on
On the front page of the IIC web-site you will find information about the the 2009 IIC Annual General Meeting; there is a link there for members to take you to the detailed information on this, the ballot paper and more.
The meeting wil be held at 5.30 pm on Friday 30th January 2009 in the Clore Auditorium of Tate Britain in London.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
A petition has been started to protest at the termination of eighteen research posts at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The cutting of the posts will mean the closing down of internationally significant laboratories such as the Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology (MASCA).
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
Users of Google Earth can now view fourteen of the Prado Museum's most famous paintings in minute detail. The paintings include Velázquez's Las Meninas, Hieronymus Bosch's tryptich, The Garden of Earthly Delights and Rogier van der Weyden's The Descent from the Cross. Launching the project, Miguel Zuzaga, Director of the Prado said, What this project offers is a level of definition that normally only we, the staff of the museum, see.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
The Getty Conservation Institute is pleased to announce that papers from the GCI's Experts' Roundtable on Sustainable Climate Management Strategies which took place in Tenerife, Spain, 2007 are now available for free download from the GCI's website: http://www.getty.edu/conservation/science/climate/climate_experts_roundtable.html
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
A consortium of European insurance companies has halted the construction of the proposed £1.1 billion Ilisu dam in the south of Turkey. The dam on the river Tigris, close to the borders of Iraq and Syria and scheduled to be complete in 2013, has courted international controversy due to its potential environmental and social impact. The dam was set to submerge numerous settlements, destroy habitats and displace 60-80,000 people. If it had gone ahead, it would also have drowned the ancient Mesopotamia town of Hasankeyf and hundreds of other unrecorded archaeological sites.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
More than eighty volunteers from Telford's Capgemini assisted the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust (UK) in moving their historic textile collection on the 11th December. The Museum has a collection of over 7000 textile items. The collection is being moved to a new area as part of preparations for the 300th anniversary of the industrial revolution.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
World Heritage monuments in Asia will now be added to the list of those monitored from space, following a recent agreement between UNESCO and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA.
JAXA is to be involved with the UNESCO-European Space Agency (ESA) Open Initiative on the use of space technologies for the benefit of World Heritage sites'. Since its launch in 2001, ESA has provided UNESCO with satellite images and technical assistance to monitor World Heritage sites in Africa and Latin America.
Submitted by Lucy Wrapson on
Think tank Demos have concluded that without increased public involvement, Britain's heritage will decline. According to their new publication It's a Material World, while more than half of Europe's conservation training is UK-based (57%), several of the country's key courses are threatened by closure. With Heritage Lottery Fund support set to drop by 43% over the next five years, the situation is worsening.
