Nineteenth-century Historicism and Historic Preservation: An Exceptional Case

On 25 March at 16.00, Associate Professor Richard Wittman (University of California, Santa Barbara) will give a public lecture “Nineteenth-century Historicism and Historic Preservation: An Exceptional Case” in room A403.

Normative historiographies regarding heritage, historicism, architectural preservation, and related fields tend to explain the prevalence of these phenomena in the nineteenth century with reference to a loss of faith in older ahistorical and specifically religious frameworks of temporality. How then do we make sense of the little-known efforts of the pontifical government during this period to protect and restore historic Christian buildings? Do they force us to question our assumptions about where such practices come from? Or do they invite us to rethink our understanding of the nineteenth-century Church?”

Richard Wittman specializes in the cultural history of architecture and town planning in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century Europe. Within that framework, themes of interest include: the emergence of modern configurations of space, society, and publicness; the history of architectural theory, criticism, and public discourse; the emergence of the modern public; and the evolution of architectural patronage in changing political contexts; religion, religious architecture, and modernity; nationalism and architecture; critiques of the normative historiography concerning architectural modernity and historicism.

Moderator: Associate Professor Kristina Jõekalda