The second of a four-part series on protecting cultural heritage was held Friday at Italy's embassy in Washington, DC.
Today's event was part of a series called 'Protecting Our Heritage', on the need to protect cultural heritage from threats posed by terrorism, crime, climate change, and neglect. It featured a talk by Aparna Tandon from an intergovernmental organization based in Rome called the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM).
Tandon presented her course called 'First Aid for Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis', to be offered in the US capital in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution and featuring numerous international experts in the field.
The first event took place Wednesday with a focus on the Egyptian Museum in Turin, which specializing in ancient Egyptian archaeology and anthropology and houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities with more than 30,000 artefacts.
Christian Greco, the museum's director, illustrated how the museum's involvement with its community and local leaders has made cultural heritage relevant to modern-day identity.
Italy's ambassador to the US, Armando Varricchio, lauded the museum as a model of innovation.
"The Egyptian Museum of Turin houses the second-largest collection of Egyptian antiquities in the world after Cairo," the ambassador said.
"It was wholly remodeled recently, and is an extraordinary example in terms of novel museum practices, innovative research, and informational projects," Varricchio said.
He spoke at the opening of a photo exhibition on famed Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli, who discovered Queen Nefertari's tomb in Deir el-Medina in the Valley of the Queens in 1904 and excavated the tomb of the royal architect Kha and his wife Merit in 1906. The latter was found intact and displayed in toto in the Turin museum, which Schiaparelli directed from 1894 until his death in 1928.
The four-part event series was organised by the Italian embassy with the EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), and is sponsored by UNESCO.
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