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Forty years after the catastrophic flood in Florence, Italy of November 1966, a symposium was held at New York University’s Villa La Pietra to commemorate the conservation efforts of the international community. Many of the invited speakers were those who had participated directly in the recovery of damaged works of art, books and monuments, working alongside Florentine specialists. Even among the seasoned practitioners of conservation, few had dealt with problems on the scale that awaited them. While some of the papers in this volume deal with specific treatment problems, e.g. the soaked and stained books of the Biblioteca Nazionale or the marble sculptures of the Bargello Museum, many of the papers touch on broader challenges that relate to other major art disaster scenarios including: difficulties in procuring specialized materials; retrofitting suitable spaces; training personnel; and overcoming language and cultural barriers. This book also includes material collected as part of the concurrent oral history project, documenting insights and memories from some of the most important and representative figures of the international conservation community who participated in the aftermath of the flood, assessing their experiences in the light of the past forty years.
Preface, Ellyn Toscano; Foreword, Rebecca Rushfield; Introduction, Michele Marincola; Acknowledgements; Press release 11 November 2006, Senator Edward M. Kennedy; Oral history of the Florence flood: personal recollections, Marco Grassi, Andrea Rothe, Joe Nkrumah, Peter Matthiesen, Natalie Brooke, Dorothy Cumpstey, Lucilla Kingsbury, Mette Bjarnhof, Karel Stretti, Dorota Niesiolowska, Erling Skaug, Henrik Bjerre, Anne Pelikan, Anthony Cains, Robert Feller, Nicolette Bingham, Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti and Peter Mallory; An account of the flood and the days that followed, Sandro Pintus; The development of mass treatments: an overview of the experience of book and paper conservators, Sheila Waters; The work of the restoration centre in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze 1967–1971, Anthony Cains; Training in book conservation after the flood, Christopher Clarkson; Where is the progress?, Joe Nkrumah; Improvements in the treatment of individual books as a result of the flood: a personal review, Dag-Ernst Petersen; The Florence flood in the popular imagination, Joanna Hines; The Florence flood: some personal recollections, Marco Grassi; Restoration in Florence following the flood, Giorgio Bonsanti; The rescue of statues and sculptures in Florence and Venice, Kenneth Hempel; New methods of paintings conservation developed in response to the flood, Andrea Rothe; The flood and the Palazzo Davanzati laboratories, Kirsten Aschengreen Piacenti; Transfer of panel paintings after the flood, Erling Skaug; The Italian Art and Archives Rescue Fund, Frances Clarke; Building a network of support for conservation: the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, Fred Licht; Experiences from a selection of disasters from 1966 to 2003, Alan M. Farancz; The experience of an American mud angel, Peter Mallory; Recovery of the panel paintings of Florence, Cristina Acidini; The United States Heritage Emergency National Task Force: disaster recovery now and in the future, Debra Hess Norris, Jane S. Long and Mary Roosa