The New Acropolis Museum in Athens has won the 2012 Keck award. The Keck award is given by the International Institute for Conservation and Historic Art Works and goes each year to the individual or group who has played the greatest role in promoting public understanding and appreciation of the accomplishments of the conservation profession.

From:
The National Herald

September 19, 2012
The Acropolis Museum receives the 2012 Keck Award

ATHENS. On Friday 14 September 2012, the Acropolis Museum was awarded by the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) in Vienna, with the Keck Award 2012. The award concerns the conservation and restoration of the Caryatids, the Kore from the south porch of the Erechtheion temple, with the use of laser technology. In 1994, the IIC Council announced the establishment of the IIC Keck Award, generously endowed by Sheldon and Caroline Keck, pioneers of art conservation. The award is presented every two years to ‘the individual or group who has contributed most towards promoting public understanding and appreciation.

Nationally funded institutions like the British Museum, often take the line that they are helping other countries protect their heritage, by “looking after” items such as the Parthenon Marbles. It seems though, that often, less attention is given to maintaining the UK’s heritage than should be. I’ve commented before on the failure to build any sort of suitable building for the Stone Henge visitor centre, despite commenting on the Greeks lack of a proper Acropolis Museum in the past – but there are many other similar cases across the country.

From:
Guardian

If Britain fails to protect its heritage we’ll have nothing left but ghosts
The Welsh mining settlement of Dylife once thrived but now it lies forgotten, like so much of our industrial past
Simon Jenkins Thursday 1 September 2011 20.29 BST

Fling off the cares of the world this autumn and climb up from the tidy mid-Welsh town of Llanidloes, north over the mountain road towards Machynlleth. Near a wild summit you enter a moonscape of old mineral workings and slag heaps. Here metals were mined in Roman times, and here the Victorians erected reputedly the largest wheel in Britain, the Martha pump, to serve what by the 1860s was the most productive lead mine in Wales’s “wild west”.

At the time the settlement of Dylife boasted three places of worship, three inns, a school and a thousand inhabitants. Then, in the 1880s, prices fell and the ore lodes were exhausted. Between the wars the place emptied and the buildings collapsed or were demolished. Today only ghosts flit the high mountain air. A lonely inn remains, the Star, amid a community of sheep.
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Following the use of laser cleaning techniques on the Greek Parthenon Sculptures, similar techniques are now going to be used on some of the buildings on the Acropolis site. The restoration of the Acropolis is probably the most technically advanced large scale projects of its type anywhere in the world – showing that although mistakes may have been made in the past, Greece is now very serious about preserving its most important monument.

From:
International Herald Tribune

Greek scientists use lasers to clean Acropolis
Reuters
Published: October 17, 2008
By Deborah Kyvrikosaios

In the past two and a half thousand years, the temples of the Acropolis have suffered fire, bombing and earthquake. Now, scientists are trying to save them from a new modern enemy: pollution.

Standing on a hilltop at the centre of Athens, a city of 4 million people, the Acropolis’ elaborately sculptured stones have fallen prey to a film of black crust from car exhaust fumes, industrial pollution, acid rain and fires.
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As scientists discover more about the microscopic organisms that live on the surface of many ancient monuments, it is becoming apparent that in some cases they can be causing significant amounts of damage that was previously unrecognised. Various possible solutions are being tested, to try & halt the damage that is being caused to the monuments of the Acropolis in Athens.

From:
New York Times

Microbes Eating Away at Pieces of History
By BINA VENKATARAMAN
Published: June 24, 2008

At Angkor Wat, the dancers’ feet are crumbling.

The palatial 12th-century Hindu temple, shrouded in the jungles of Cambodia, has played host to a thriving community of cyanobacteria ever since unsightly lichens were cleaned off its walls nearly 20 years ago. The microbes have not been good guests.
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