CB VLAANDEREN

De toekomst van het verleden

Jan van Zomeren

While the wooden piles under Amsterdam begin to rot, the water level in Venice is rising and the 4,500-year-old ruins of Mohenjo Daro are flooding in Pakistan. Due to the subsidence of the English peat soil, Hadrian's Wall collapses. Due to the increase in salt, the bricks of excavated Babylon explode. Melting permafrost in Siberia is undermining the ancient burial mounds of the Scythian civilization. In the US, hurricanes wiped out some of the heritage of New Orleans and Puerto Rico, while the 2019 wildfires forced the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to close.

The climate crisis threatens historical heritage all over the world, with higher temperatures, more storms and fires and of course the rising waters. Monuments, buildings, inner cities and cultural landscapes are at risk, and museums such as the Louvre have already started moving parts of their collections to climate-resilient depots. The Future of the Past provides an overview of this urgent subject for the first time and suggests solutions. Special attention is paid to the Netherlands, where heritage has been closely linked to the natural environment since the seventeenth century. Moreover, due to the rise in sea levels, the stakes are high.

Climate change means we have to deal with history in new ways. Historical heritage now confronts us not only with the past, but also with the future.

Thijs Weststeijn is professor of art history at Utrecht University. His publications include Art and Antiquity in the Netherlands and Britain (2015) and The Visible World (2008). In 2017 he created the exhibition Barbarians and Philosophers in the Frans Hals Museum. He also regularly writes for a wider audience, for which he was awarded the ABG Vrij Nederland Essay Prize.

Cover: Paperback / Size: 21.4 x 13.7 x 2 cm / Pages: 288 / Language: Dutch / Publisher: Prometheus / Publication: 26-04-2023

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