Cultura, non culturalismo: il journal “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”
10.6092/issn.1973-9494/15317
application/pdf
1973-9494
15317
en
Cosimo Damiano Fonseca
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage
Culture, not culturalism: the journal “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”
Text.Serial.Journal
https://conservation-science.unibo.it/
21
Opening section
2022-08-02
2022-07-29
2022-08-02
2022-08-02
CSCH
Cosimo Damiano Fonseca
2021
10.6092/issn.1973-9494/15317
Academician of the Lincei, Rome
1973-9494
en
Culture, not culturalism: the journal “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”
https://conservation-science.unibo.it/article/download/15317/14546
21
C    ULTURE, NOT CULTURALISM: THE JOURNAL
     “CONSERVATION SCIENCE IN CULTURAL HERITAGE”

Cosimo Damiano Fonseca
Academician of the Lincei, Rome




     It was definitely not easy for Salvatore Lorusso to validate the theoretical and opera-
tive framework whose overall design would inspire the editorial initiative we are celebrat-
ing today and which has reached the prestigious 20-year milestone of its existence.
     To prove it, we only need to mention the obstacles from within the Tuscia faculty it-
self at the hearing of the teaching staff promoted by the Ministry of the University and
Scientific Research concerning the “state” of the Faculty in Viterbo and the Degree
Course in Udine.
     The only professor who declared he was available for the hearing was Lorusso,
whose observations were extremely precious in preparing the report for the Minister,
which would provide the basis for the Udine Conference and the report for the curricu-
lar outline of the “Reform”.
     However, our colleague was moving to the glorious University of Bologna and the
prestigious seat in Ravenna, where there was a particular cultural vivacity in the Institute
of Antichità Ravennati e Bizantine directed by Raffaella Farioli Campanati, an impecca-
ble art historian, and where, in the section Italia Nostra, Desideria Pasolini Dall’Onda was
the competent hostess.
     It is not by chance that in this new academic and cultural context, Salvatore Lorus-
so’s interests developed until the launching of a Journal that was an innovation in the
sector of cultural heritage.
     “The invitation to be strong and to arm oneself heralds the inevitable battle”. This is
what we could feel in that distant, but near 2001, the year of the founding, at the Uni-
versity of Bologna, of the Journal, “Quaderni di Scienza e della Conservazione”, which
changed its name to “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage” in 2007, to become
more international.
     What was the reason for “being strong”?
     Sharing with Salvatore Lorusso the idea and, therefore, the intent to open a new
and different journal, we felt we were facing a difficult challenge. The duel was not
against a local, national or international Institution, but against an atavistic, and as
such, acquired idea and consequent acknowledgment of the singularity and validity re-
lated to the decisional uniqueness in its evaluation by the historians of the historical-hu-
manistic sciences for problems regarding the protection and valorization of cultural
heritage: the technical-experimental sciences could, if necessary, intervene, but only
for a potential and simple consultation.
     A real doctrine existed in life and in the course of scientific research in that sector,
which represented an attitude that was well-established and diffused. Therefore, this is
the global meaning on which rests the current text written on the occasion of the 20th
anniversary of the Journal’s publication.
     At first it is important to underline its intent, which over the years the Journal has
fully achieved as its objective, and which was born from the will to tackle and examine
in depth the knowledge and research in the polyhedric sector of cultural heritage and
taking into consideration the holistic value of cultural heritage.
     The intent was to point out that the approach, which was different compared to the
way information had been passed on in the past, in discussing cultural heritage wished
to highlight the importance of the set of values corresponding to the different scientific
historical-humanistic, philological-philosophical-social, technical-economical-manage-
rial, legal-identity areas.
     Hence, the importance of interdisciplinarity in dealing with and helping to find a
solution to the numerous and different problems related to cultural heritage.
     Consequently, the importance of a historical-technical Journal in observing the state
of the art regarding research on multidisciplinary aspects connected to cultural heri-
tage, to its knowledge and conservation, was evident. Such research, it is worth em-
phasizing could only be carried out in synergy with the different and specific disciplinary
sectors that characterized it.
     The aim was to affirm the importance of the uniqueness of the sciences as a syn-
ergy between human sciences and experimental sciences and, at the same time, to of-
fer an instrument of communication accessible to the experts, to the Institutions and
public opinion. The objective was to show how historical-artistic research could be tak-
en a step further in its objectivity by dealing with it from new and more stimulating
points of view and using a different investigation method. Such assumptions, present-
ed and communicated, were at the basis of the research sent over the years for publi-
cation in the Journal. The subjects connected to the various scientific areas were then
subjected to the evaluation of Qualified Reviewers, who were competent experts in
specific research areas. Particular attention was paid to young researchers, who were
offered a way and means of having a continuous flow of knowledge, so that in the fu-
ture they could give a meaning to our effort, having been driven to improve it.
     Looking beyond the medium-long term, the efforts made to open the Journal, plant-
ing the seeds for the future, which is such a coveted reality, have won over the media
and the international market. Edited in English and Italian, and available in hardcopy
and electronic version, it rests on two conceptual terms: interdisciplinarity and interna-
tionalization.
     This is therefore, how the research, studies, experimental contributions, and the-
matic collections, which have been the subject of the annual publication of the Journal
for twenty years, from 2001 to 2020, represent a concrete result attributable to the in-
tegration in the scientific field of the above-mentioned knowledge, a knowledge that has
no boundaries, scientific, geographical or otherwise.
     In these chaotic and particular times, owing to an international scenario where glo-
balization dominates not only in an economic context, but also in the cultural and sci-
entific sectors, we should not only rely on an editorial model with univocal characteris-
tics, but on the peculiarity of a dynamic model, of an open structure, free and innovative,
with a team that is likewise eager to follow open minds.
     This then is how with the aim of creating a synergy between art and science, the de-
sire was to highlight that, if culture is one, cultural is also plural.
     Culture is a quality, an identity that unites and elevates, whereas the cultural dis-
perses, scatters, deteriorates, discredits, forcing us to look at numbers in the cumber-
some context of quantity: cultural heritage, cultural activities, cultural actors, cultural
engineers, cultural deposits, cultural industries.
     This is why it is not only important to verify, in the criticism of an art work and in the
scientific evaluation of research, whether they meet the criteria mentioned above, but
also to certify if the art work or the research correspond to “culture” and, so, to quality
and identity: this is, therefore, how the principles, on which the scientific works published
in the Journal “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage” have been established and
consolidated.
