from Los Angeles Times
Treasure of an island cruises the rivers around Manhattan
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How does one go about "preserving" an unrealised artwork? The (re)construction of Robert Smithson's Floating Island, which had remained as a sketch since the death of the artist, is an interesting take on preserving an artist's idea as against the final physical materials of the work. There is also a video of the project on Whitney Museum's web-page.

from MSNBC
Accidental invention could light up the future
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An improvement of the technology driving LED lights (see previous post) will go towards making them unbiquitous (including in the museum) in the near future.

from The New York Times
Museums Set to Sell Art, and Some Experts Cringe
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Some call it "renewal" while others have criticised it as "ill-informed". The de-accessioning of museums' collections for sale has consistently touched a raw nerve, reflecting the inability of museum professionals to agree on a common philosophical framework with regards to the ownership of cultural artefacts - are these historical materials that happen to have an economic value (and cost of maintenance) or are these the very evidence (and essence) of humanity's history. Or perhaps both, which, of course, doesn't help clarify the debate at all.

from UNESCO
2005 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award Winners
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The recently announced winners for the conservation of built heritage in the Asia-Pacific region inculded a team from the National University of Singapore who did some highly commendable work in Lijiang, China (see NUS press release and more information).

from ICOM-CC 14th Triennial
Congress Newspaper
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Summarising the recently concluded ICOM-CC conservation conference in the Hague in September 2005, a newspaper-format newsletter was produced at the close of the conference and distributed to the delegates, which is also online.

from Digital Preservation Mailing List
iPRES presentation

Just to pass on an update originally posted on the digital preservation mailing list.

----- Original Message -----

Dear colleagues,

the live recordings of the presentations at the
International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES)
15 – 16 September 2005 in Göttingen
as well as the respective pdf documents are now online and can be viewed at:

http://rdd.sub.uni-goettingen.de/conferences/ipres/programme

All the best,
Heike Neuroth

Dr. Heike Neuroth
Research & Development - DINI secretary
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/ - http://www.dini.de/
Goettingen State and University Library (SUB)
Papendiek 14
37073 Göttingen

from International Herald Tribune
China is racing to get its art treasures back
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An interesting take on further attempts to buy back historical Chinese artefacts, which was briefly highlighted here in a previous post. Only now, there is a strong whiff of ultra-nationalism and purposefulness, given the involvement of the military in China.

from The Guardian
How Britain helps China destroy Tibet
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When museums get drawn into political agendas, perhaps unwittingly. It points to a larger but mistaken assumption that cultural and heritage matters somehow transcends the merely political (or everyday), which is never the case.

from the New York Times
Synchronizing the Present and Past in a Timeless Place
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Another glimpse into the French world of heritage preservation at the Versailles Palace, previously posted here. The deliberate yet meticulous attention to technical details may seem out of place in an efficiency-driven world that is widely expected. However, it is also true that when something is worth doing, sometimes it is worth doing it slowly.

from BBC News
Original Alice work in 3D online
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Highlighting the Turning the Page project at the British Library, which currently has 14 historically significant books (in the British context, at least) that can be browsed virtually. An acceptable compromise between preservation and access, surely.