The Future of the Past

As the wooden piles under Amsterdam begin to rot, water levels rise in Venice. The 4,500-year-old ruins of Mohenjo-daro flood in Pakistan. Compaction of peat soil in northern England is causing Hadrian's Wall to collapse. The bricks of excavated Babylon are exploding as a result of increasing salt levels. Melting permafrost in Siberia is endangering the ancient burial mounds of the Scythian civilization. In the US, hurricanes have partially destroyed the heritage of New Orleans and Puerto Rico, while the 2019 wildfires forced the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to close. The climate crisis is threatening historical heritage all over the world, with higher temperatures, more storms and fires and, of course, rising sea levels. Monuments, buildings, inner cities and cultural landscapes are at risk, and museums such as the Louvre have already started relocating parts of their collections to climate-proof storage facilities. Written by a highly regarded art historian, The Future of the Past addresses this urgent issue and asks us to include the fate of beauty in our conversations on climate change. Extreme weather means we have to approach history in new ways. Historical heritage now confronts us not only with the past, but also the future.

Prologue: A cry of nations o'er sunken halls 1. Historical heritage threatened by the climate crisis Dutch canaries in a global coalmine A bathtub surrounded by water A heritage worldwide under threat Higher water temperatures, more droughts and rain Thawing permafrost Storms and fires The rising sea Museums Combinations of factors 2. Why heritage? The heritage crusade continues Inheriting and legating: the new challenge Solastalgia Heritage: between micro and micro 3. Art and nature: fertile cross-pollination Mankind's best moment? The Little Ice Age Landscape into art The artificial landscape From wind and pear to coal and oil Shell and the climate movement Artists versus the fossil fuel industry The robber barons and their art patronage Artwashing worldwide Another colonial dimension: Britain, India, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq Museums as battlegrounds for climate action 4. The historical sensation in the Anthropocene Human and natural history: a matter of scale The historical sensation in the light of the future The end of progressivism Progress in the West = decline in the Global South Cyclical history The Great Acceleration Human and non-human time regimes The multiple temporalities of heritage 5. Transformation Authenticity and materials A cyclical view: breaking down and building up Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Abandoning heritage 6. Digitization The real and the virtual The ubiquity and ephemerality of the digital world Digitization as a tool 7. Reconstruction A receding coastline: the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and Clavell Tower The temple of Zhang Fei UNESCO's views on reconstruction Place, identity and the 'global commons' Epilogue: looking the beast in the eye Heritage contributes to better understanding Cathedral thinking List of illustrations Notes Index