In this episode, Lindsey speaks with Cecilia Salgado and Marlene Sámano about their role as cultural heritage conservators and educators in Mexico and Latin America more broadly.
Cecilia Salgado is a photographic conservator in private practice who is currently studying for a Masters in Sustainability and Social-Environmental Projects. Currently her work involves finding adaptive strategies in photographic conservation towards a low environmental impact in her practice. Marlene Sámano is an architectural heritage conservator and a professor at La Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía (ENCRyM).Her work in teaching includes the intangible and constructive cultural aspects to create a more holistically approach toward built heritage conservation.
They describe how sustainability is incorporated into their work and how it is both a new concept and an old one rooted in traditional understanding of the landscape. Both guests touch on how adaptability is essential to our future as a field and as communities: that with climate disasters increasing, we must recognize how our environmental contexts are shifting. We are at a strategic point in history where we can define what sustainability looks like in our field, determine how best to adapt on both local and global scales, and utilize our values to direct our actions to better safeguarding our heritage, supporting our communities standard of living, and bettering the health of our planet.
Marlene mentions the Laboratory of Traditional Technology at ENCRyM. Here, an anthropological approach is taken towards knowledge that has been passed down generationally, but is at a risk to be lost. This includes studying historic techniques for producing objects, use of local materials, indigenous knowledge, and ways of relating to the landscape and environment.
Manual de Sostenibilidad Ambiental en la Conservación de Fotografías is an open access manual that Cecilia wrote to more easily share tips and techniques.
For a similar topic: Please check out Season 2 Episode 10 where we speak with the UCLA Getty program.
Resources referenced in the episode:
2017 Earthquake in Mexico
STICH
Planetary boundary - Stockholm resilience center
Circular Economy
7 R’s