TLRH | Out of the Ashes | Post-Conflict Recovery: Mosul Museum Project Zero

Monday, 25 January 2021 An online lecture as part of the Out of the
Ashes Lecture Series, with Corine Wegener, Director, Smithsonian
Cultural Rescue Initiative titled 'Evidence Aiding Post-Conflict
Recovery: Mosul Museum Project Zero'. In 2014, Daesh (aka ISIS)
established their so-called “Caliphate” in the city of Mosul and
cut a swath of intentional destruction of cultural heritage across
Iraq’s Nineveh plain. After the liberation of Mosul in 2017,
international organizations began to offer help with cultural
recovery, including the heavily damaged Mosul Cultural Museum. As a
potential war crime scene under the definition of the 1954 Hague
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of
Armed Conflict, heritage professionals realized they had only one
chance to document the evidence before recovery began or risk
losing it forever. In a unique collaboration with law enforcement
professionals, the Smithsonian Institution developed a methodology
to systematically document cultural destruction where criminal
activity is known or suspected. Wegener will describe how the
methodology was used to document the Mosul Cultural Museum as a
“cold case crime scene” and how it may be used in the future as the
first step on the road to recovery. About Corine Wegner Corine
Wegner is the director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue
Initiative (SCRI), an outreach program dedicated to the
preservation of cultural heritage in crisis situations in the U.S.
and abroad. SCRI’s work includes projects in Syria, Iraq, Haiti,
Nepal, and around the world. SCRI also co-chairs, with FEMA’s
Office of Environmental and Historic Preservation, the Heritage
Emergency National Task Force, part of the U.S. National Disaster
Recovery Framework. Wegener lectures and writes about the
importance of cultural property protection during natural disasters
and armed conflict. Wegener has a bachelor’s degree in Political
Science from the University of Nebraska Omaha and MA degrees in
Political Science and Art History from the University of Kansas.
About the Out of the Ashes Lecture Series This three-year lecture
series explores the theme of cultural loss and recovery across the
centuries, from the destruction of the Library of Alexandria in
antiquity to contemporary acts of cultural loss and destruction. A
panel of world-leading experts reflects on how societies deal with
cultural trauma through reconstruction and commemoration, and on
how the international community should respond to cultural loss.
The series is global in scope, pan-historical and
multi-disciplinary in approach, and features international scholars
and practitioners of the highest calibre. Year 3 (2020–1)
Recovering draws together the themes of the series by exploring how
we recover from cultural trauma—such as the tragic loss of the
National Museum of Brazil in 2018—both literally through
reconstruction of lost archives and artefacts, and also socially
through the creation of sites of cultural memory, whether virtual
or real. The lectures also consider the debate on restitution and
contemporary campaigns for repatriation—notably the case of the
‘Migrated Archive’ consisting of thousands of files from former
British colonial possessions whose existence was illegally kept
secret in breach of the Public Records Act (UK). A special panel
event ‘Recovering Lost Voices’, will focus on suppressed histories
and the unwritten archive, reflecting on issues of power and
gender. The Out of the Ashes lecture series is generously supported
by Sean and Sarah Reynolds. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/