The relationship between history and conservation

Conservation of Beni Culturali took on the attributes of a field, with shared questions and a shared canon, only in the twentieth century. History has had its questions and canon since antiquity. They do not, generally, speak to one another, and while conservation emerged from the realm of practice and is still defined by the demands of “treatment,” history has been one of the central liberal arts since the time of Cicero, and in its modern, academic form has been defined by the prominence of the question (the Fragestellung).

In this lecture, part of the series La Normale delle Idee, Peter N. Miller proposes an alternative way of conceiving conservation as history and history as a practice of conservation. He traces the origins of both modern conservation and modern historical scholarship to the work of early modern antiquarians.

📅 Wednesday 25th March 2026
⏰ 6 p.m.
📍 Sala Azzurra, Palazzo della Carovana (and online)

Further info at the link in bio.

Peter N. Miller  | President of the American Academy in Rome
The relationship between history and conservation. Foundations for a future field 

IMG: CC0 1.0 Universal Jan Brueghel I & Peter Paul Rubens - Sight_(Museo_del_Prado)