Lecture 3: Engaged Preservation
Time
2022.11.22 9:00 a.m. (GMT+8)
ZOOM Link
Zoom ID: 81299018637
Password: 346360
Host
Dr. Kuanghan Li
Director Assistant, WHITRAP Beijing
Discussant
Prof. SUN Jing
Associate Professor, Quanzhou Academy of Cultural Heritage, Quanzhou Normal University
Prof. WANG Siyu
Assistant Professor, School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University
Director, Public Archaeology and Arts Research Center, Peking University
Research Fellow, WHITRAP Beijing
Abstract
Preservation is a profession that constantly and intimately engages with society’s empirical issues and opportunities. Driven by taking on the challenges of contemporary society, engaged preservation embraces the dual lives of preservation as social processes and material fabric, as well as the dual capacities of the historic built environment as an archive for traditional curating and an agent for social change. Dealing with material and social imperatives holistically, the measure of engaged preservation successfully advances community development and building performance and cultural relevance, while at the same time weaving historic places and narratives back into the fabric of communities and regions.
About the Speaker
Randall F. Mason
Professor
Graduate Program in Historic Preservation
City & Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania
Randall Mason teaches in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation and is a professor in the Department of City & Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include history and theory of preservation, preservation planning, the economics of preservation, historic site management, and the history and design of memorials. He served as Program Chair from 2009-2017 and Executive Director of PennPraxis from 2014-2017.
Before joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, Mason worked as a Senior Project Specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute, researching economic and social issues related to heritage conservation. His previous positions included Assistant Professor and Director of Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland, and adjunct faculty in landscape architecture at RISD. He has years of professional experience in consulting practice and co‑founded the nonprofit research group Minerva Partners.
His publications include: The Once and Future New York: Historic Preservation and the Modern City (University of Minnesota Press, 2009, winner of SAH’s Antoinette Forrester Downing Award); Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (edited with Max Page; Routledge, second edition, 2019); Values in Heritage Management (edited with Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, and David Myers; Getty Publications, 2019).
Contemporary Heritage Theory Lecture Series – Introduction
In recent decades, the attributes, functions and roles of cultural heritage in contemporary society have seen drastic changes. Heritage has gradually departed from being a specialized industry interpreted by a small group of professionals, towards becoming a subject of wider social concern. In addition to focusing on the material condition, heritage conservation and utilization are also employed by diverse groups as a means to address contemporary social and cultural issues. Nonetheless, whether as a result of physical conservation or as a catalyst for social development, value‑centered concept has always been an important approach in heritage conservation. This lecture series invites Professor Randall Mason from the University of Pennsylvania, with contemporary American society as an example, to present a historical retrospection, conceptual clarification, and practical exploration of heritage value perception, as well as its implications for conservation and social development practice. We hope that students from diverse professional backgrounds can understand the dynamic and extensive nature of the heritage discipline, and thus promote interdisciplinary communication and integration.
The “Contemporary Heritage Theory” Lecture Series is sponsored by the Peking University Office of International Relations as part of the “Peking University Distinguished Overseas Scholars Lecture Series”.
