Memory of the World Programme<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/A>. Its stated
\nintention — “to guard against collective amnesia” — has to be the hippest official mandate of any
\nworld body. By seeking out and registering archival holdings of historic documents and library
\ncollections, the program (and the broader idea of documentary heritage itself) “is the mirror
\nof the world and its memory.”<\/P>
\nSo what kind of stuff has made it into the Memory of the World Register?
\nStuff like this:<\/P>
\n
The original manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; 1,300 works on astronomy (in
\nTurkish, Persian and Arabic) held in the Library of Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research
\nInstitute at Bogazici University in Istanbul; an inventory of postcards from Africa covering the
\nyears 1890-1930; archives of the Warsaw Ghetto; a Uzbekistan collection of Oriental miniatures
\nof the Middle East from the 14th to 17th centuries; a Colombian exhibition of “100
\nyears of photography”; Copernicus’ autobiography “De revolutionibus libri sex,” from 1520 or
\nso. <\/P>
\n
Here are some previously nominated items from China<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/A>, from Finland<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/A>, and from the United States<\/STRONG><\/EM><\/FONT><\/A>.
\nAs of this month, UNESCO is planning to add 23 more documentary collections from 20
\ncountries, among them:<\/P>
\n
\nFrom France:<\/STRONG> The original Declaration of the Rights of Man and
\nof the Citizen of 1789-1791. It’s preserved at National Historical Archives Center in Paris. There
\nare actually six versions. The one included in the Register is the first, dated Nov. 3, 1789,
\nalong with a signed note and letters patent by King Louis XVI approving the text of the
\nDeclaration and various decrees adopted by the National Assembly between August and
\nNovember of that year.
\n<\/P>
\n
From Barbados:<\/STRONG> The Documentary Heritage of Enslaved Peoples
\nof the Caribbean. This is a unique body of evidence, including legal documents, plantation ledgers,
\nestate and shipping inventories, rare books, original prints and paintings, relating to the lives of
\nenslaved Caribbean people through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, preserved by the Barbados
\nMuseum & Historical Society.<\/P>
\nFrom Chile:<\/STRONG> The Human Rights Archive of Chile. Originating from
\nseveral collections, it includes material from human rights organizations active during the military
\ndictatorship (1973 to 1989), notably press clippings about human rights abuses from 1974 to
\n1990, (arrests, political executions, banishments, torture and disappearances), and an important
\nphoto register of nearly 1,000 of the people who disappeared during the dictatorship.<\/P>
\nFrom Germany:<\/STRONG> Illuminated manuscripts from the Ottonian period
\nproduced in the monastery of Reichenau (Lake Constance) for Emperor Otto III (983-1002) and
\nfor his successor Heinrich II (1002-1024). This dispersed set of 10 manuscripts, which
\nsurvived the upheavals of an entire millennium, epitomizes book illustration of the Ottonian period
\nin Germany.<\/P>
\nFrom Luxembourg:<\/STRONG> The “Family of Man” photographic exhibition
\nmounted by the photographer Edward J. Steichen in 1955 for the New York Museum of Modern
\nArt (MoMA). It was donated by the U.S. government to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and is
\npreserved in the Clervaux Museum.<\/P>
\nFrom Mexico:<\/STRONG> The original cellulose nitrate negative of the 1950
\nfilm “Los olvidados,” released in English as “The Young and the Damned,” directed by
\nSpanish-Mexican director Luis Bunuel. It had been lost for 20 years and is now preserved in
\nMexico City, in the vaults of Filmoteca of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.<\/P>
\nFrom the Netherlands:<\/STRONG> The archives of the Dutch East India
\nCompany. Founded in 1602, the Dutch East India Company was the largest of the early modern
\nEuropean trading companies operating in Asia. Between 1602 and 1796, the company sent almost
\na million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more
\nthan 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. The archive has 25 million pages of records about
\npolitical, economic, cultural, religious and social circumstances produced by company officials
\nwho were stationed in outposts on the trade routes.<\/P>
\nFrom Poland:<\/STRONG> The 21 Demands, which documents the birth of the
\nSolidarity trade union. These political demands, made by the Strike Committee in August 1980, in
\nGdansk, led to the creation of Solidarity — the first free trade union within the Communist
\nbloc — and marked a watershed in the history of the Communist bloc. <\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n<\/P>
\n
There’s also a separate World Heritage List<\/FONT><\/STRONG><\/EM><\/A>. Isn’t it
\nnice to know the United States has resumed paying its fair share of contributions to
\nUNESCO?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a world bent on destruction, preservationists have fought to save everything from the wilderness and natural resources to linguistic and cultural heritages. Artistically, the “early music” movement for historically informed performance of works from the Medieval, Rennaisance and Baroque periods is probably the best-known example of the preservationist ethic. It also has a counterpart in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-5W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}