San Gemini Historic Preservation Studies - Program Philosophy For Preservation

Program Philosophy For Preservation

The purpose of preserving cultural heritage is to enhance awareness of who we are as humans, where we come from, and where we are going. The world is changing at an extraordinary speed and our heritage is under assault on many fronts: biological, environmental and cultural. The world’s diverse cultural heritage is being rapidly replaced by a homogeneous global industrial culture. As we deal with these changes, it is important that we retain cultural heritage and valuable diversity either as a clear memory or as a vital, living part of it.

Cultural objects are a material form of memory carrying evidence of all the complex historical and cultural forces that created them. Preserving and understanding such heritage requires a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach. All cultural events are the result of the infinite number of forces that generate them. The program attempts to study objects and cultural events from as many disciplines as are relevant.

The program’s efforts are directed at a singular territory, the hill town of San Gemini, in the central Italian region of Umbria. This approach to studying culture is to thoroughly explore one particular place or object and then to follow the threads that connect it to events in the larger world. Focusing on one place has allows students to better understand the cultural fabric that carries the objects we study. In this way two things are accomplished: first, generating knowledge and work that is useful to this particular town and second, learning about patterns of cultural interconnection, an important tool in preserving cultural heritage that can be applied anywhere in the world.