Coping with the Past. Creative Perspectives on Conservation and Restoration

(coedited with Bruno Latour and Pedro Memelsdorff). Firenze: Leo S. Olschki, 2010.

This book is based on the 2007 Dialogo di San Giorgio, entitled Inheriting the past. Tradition, translation, betrayal, innovation. The topic for the seminar was chosen in relation to a celebrated Giorgio Cini Foundation project: the creation of a facsimile of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding at Cana, an event which had a wide international echo and led to a wideranging debate on the relationship between the original and the copy. The Dialogo explored the issue of the relationship with tradition in four different kinds of cultural legacy: the visual arts, music, ecosystems and texts. The analysis focused particularly on the contribution that the new technologies can offer to enable us to inherit the past “well”. The participants at the seminar included internationally renowned experts and artists, such as Frederick Brenk, Steven Feld, Carlo Ginzburg, Joseph Koerner, Bruno Latour, Adam Lowe, Pedro Memelsdorff, Richard Powers, Shirley Strum, David Western and Albena Yaneva.