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February, 2008496
Becoming conservator… Being conservator
Thinking on the choice I made to become a conservator, I realize that it definitely influenced every aspect of my life. Recently, I’ve given even more thoughts to this issue since developing the education section of the magazine brought me face to face again, after years, with schools, teachers and students. At a point I got confronted with the regret that in my student time I couldn’t benefit from today’s facilities and conditions. On the other hand, I felt happy that I already committed to conservation, since to practice this profession has been a wonderful experience for me. Both sides of this story are well exemplified in this issue of the magazine. I think it can be said that Conservation-Restoration higher education is worldwide a very recent concept. After all, in most countries it only appeared at university level within the last 20 years. In 1999, 45 European countries signed the Bologna Declaration, agreeing to establish a common European Higher Education Area. Each country went probably through many changes but now, each signatory country must have the Bologna process implemented and running until 2010. The expected benefits of this long, not without problems implementation, are to overcome the educational system differences and to promote mobility of staff and students between universities, between courses and also between countries. You can't change universities overnight, thus we find very interesting to assess how some countries are making this transition. In this issue you can read about the case of Portugal. Conservation, however, is a dynamic profession by itself. It has active and less active sides, of course, but is about a continuous interchange of information and experience between professionals. This leads me to the other side of my introduction, meaning the advantages, and moreover, the unique opportunities that conservation brings us. This may refer to works of art we deal with, when years ago we might not even have imagined to be in their proximity. It may as well refer to the unique situations we face in conservation. I am now referring to the chance I had to meet John Asmus two years ago in a mural paintings workshop in Romania. For those who are not aware, John Asmus is the American scientist who first applied laser technology to the cleaning of works of art, back in the 70’s. It is not very often to meet someone to revolutionise art conservation world as he did, thus we interviewed him to share this experience. I could go on and talk about each of the subjects in this issue as all of them are interesting. They deal with less common areas such as conservation of mummies and sarcophagi and with conservation interventions conditioned by the religious aspect, such as the one at Surpatele Monastery. I hope you will find these subjects as interesting as I did. Rui Bordalo, Executive Editor
Permanent link to this resource: http://www.e-conservationline.com/content/view/595
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