2019 SYDNEY TALK SERIES NUMBER 7
Tuesday 26th November 2019
Heritage Resilience at the San Antonio Missions
UNESCO World Heritage Site Texas USA
Heritage resilience is defined by the capacities of a cultural heritage resource to sustain, survive and recover from anything that would degrade or destroy it. Cultural heritage resources are vulnerable to many threats, each requiring consideration of individual risks and potential response actions. At the San Antonio Missions in Texas, we are engaged in a process to enhance heritage resilience in the face of multiple vulnerabilities, natural as well as human-made. The efforts aim to achieve the complementary objectives of increased resilience for both the tangible buildings and their intangible values. Both tangible and intangible will be discussed in this presentation, but intangible heritage will be a focus because it is more difficult to protect due to the nature of laws and regulations largely based on property ownership. The central question will concern how a heritage professional can work to sustain the intangible from being marginalized, lost or erased due to low capacity for resilience. Using examples from San Antonio, Texas, William Dupont will explain his work on cultural sustainability and seek responses from the audience to further a global conversation.
William Dupont is a professor of architecture at The University of Texas at San Antonio, where he leads the Center for Cultural Sustainability in research projects on the heritage of people as a core element of a sustainable future. Also, Bill teaches architectural design studios and graduate seminars in historic preservation. Current research projects include writing a best practices manual for care of the San Antonio Missions and working on a Sacred Places Heritage Network for disaster resilience in the Texas Gulf Coast region. He has led a U.S. technical team supporting Cuban preservation efforts at Museo Ernest Hemingway since 2005, recently completing a new preservation lab for care of the many Hemingway documents and artefacts in Havana. Before becoming a professor in San Antonio, he was Chief Architect at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC.
Time & Date: Tuesday 26th November 2019, 5.30pm for 6pm start
Cost: Students $10, Members $15, non-members $20 all payable through Eventbrite
Venue: GML Heritage, Australia Council Building, 372 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, 2010 (corner of Cooper Street)
RSVP: by Friday 22nd November 2019. Bookings are essential as places are limited.
Any queries to thubbul@bigpond.com
