History
The San Gemini Preservation Studies Program was started by Max Cardillo with Nikos Vakalis and Leda Violati of the Associazione per la Valorizzazione del Patrimonio Storico, San Gemini. The idea was to create a program that brought students from the United States to work in collaboration with this local preservation group and to create courses and to have field projects where students and faculty could work on sites the local associations were promoting.
Those first courses offered in 1999 were Survey of Historic Buildings and Introduction to Restoration. In Italy in the first years the program was directed jointly by Prof. Max Cardillo & Prof. Mathew Jarosz. In 2005 the program expanded to include a second session more oriented towards art historians and art restorers, including a class on Restoration Theory and a studio course in Traditional Painting Methods in Italy. In 2007 a third session was added, which is a new course on the History of Italian gardens and Urban Landscape.
The field work in the first few years, 1999-2001, was focused on the survey of the 12th Century Church of San Giovanni Battista. From 2002 until 2004 work was carried out on the restoration of the North West façade of that church. Part of the survey was done in collaboration with a team from the engineering school of the University of Perugia led by Professors Emanuela Speranzini and Marco Corradi. During this period a good working relation was established with the Sovrintendenza per I Beni Culturali in Perugia and their local supervisor Dott. Margherita Romano. In 2004 a new field project was started to survey and restore the façade of the 14th Century Church of Santo. This project, as of 2008, is ongoing. In 2005 Professor Jane Whitehead of Valdosta State University started a new archaeological excavation at the nearby ancient city of Carsulae in collaboration with the SGPS. This project is also ongoing as of 2010.
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