Lascaux's Administrator Candid about Continued Condition Problems
Black Mold Patches Above a Cow's Horns, Lascaux
Photo, French Ministry of Culture
The official cover-up of the condition problems of the prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux appears to be over.
In a front-page in Tuesday's Washington Post, Molly Moore quoted the French cave's administrator, Marie-Anne Sire, confessing:
Each time we try to resolve one problem, we create another.
Just last April, the International Committee for the Preservation of Lascaux (ICPL), an ad hoc watchdog group, challenged an announcement on French television "claiming the crisis in Lascaux is resolved."A small team of workers clad in protective suits sprayed ammonia-based solutions on the spots, and the cave was sealed in January.
When scientists reentered the cave in April, Sire said, "I was holding my breath."
Though the black [mold] spots had stopped spreading in nine of the 11 treated zones, they remain a serious danger to engravings in the smaller sections of the cave that are the most susceptible to temperature and humidity changes.
Sire said the scientific team is divided over how to proceed. Members will meet next week to determine whether to continue treating the black spots or halt further intervention.
At this week's meeting in Quebec of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, ICPL is asking that the prehistoric cave, a World Heritage Site, be placed on the committee's list of sites in danger.
An appropriate gesture, but how is the manmade deterioriation of the cave ultimately going to be solved? Now that French authorities have fully owned up to the intractability of the problem, perhaps they will aggressively seek expert international help in devising a solution. This intervention is long overdue.
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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University. Contact me
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