Guest Speech|Juan M. Gabarron, CEO of the Gabarron Foundation

Date:2022-06-14

Speech by Juan M. Gabarron, CEO of the Gabarron Foundation


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Hello. Happy International Museum Day to everyone! I hope I can make a humble contribution to this Dialogue “Protection of Our Cultural Heritage” in this third session: “partnering with the private sector”. We can think about protecting our Cultural Heritage considering many different perspectives and players: Museums, Governments, Police, auction houses, galleries, lawyers, etc. We already talked about most of them in today's dialogue. 


Now I would like to contribute sharing some of our experience. In this 2022, The Gabarron Foundation makes 30 years since its inception in Valladolid, Spain. One of our first programs in the 1990s was to help with the protection of the heritage in our Region. Our Region holds more than 50% of the Spanish heritage, and when we began our activities, the heritage was quite at high risk. There was always a big risk of thieves, but most dangerous issues for our Heritage were, still are, and most likely will still be in the future. Number 1: the “time passing by and the action of natural elements (sun light and humidity mostly) and chemical pollution”. Number 2: the lack of the conservancy in a proper way. Number 3: the lack of professionals capable to address and execute conservation and restauration as soon as it is needed.


For sure all these points are already taken care of in any Museum but out there, in our society, where most of our cultural heritage is, these tasks are paramount. They are not just addressed in most countries, and oftentimes goes backwards. An eye opener example could be when last year, in July 2021, the UNESCO Convention, held in Fuzhou, China, removed Liverpool-Maritime Mercantile City from the World Heritage list due to an “irreversible loss” of the historical value of its Victorian docks.


Museums' collections are limited to their walls, but Museums in this century must keep relevant and be a beacon to go beyond their physical limits; they can take the lead on advocating for this subject because the society at large has the responsibility not just to protect our cultural heritage but to pass it on to future generations in better conditions. This task would be impossible to carry-on just for museums and that's why we need private sector. In order to tackle this, we need more experts, and this is precisely how we contributed to the protection of our heritage; by teaming up with Universidad de Leon and creating the School of Art Conservation and Restoration “ESR”. We delivered new professionals that now convey on this critical mission.


Our approach is hands-on and focused on practice since the very beginning of the student's education until their graduation. In these photos we can see the students working with some artworks. During the 1990s and the 2000 we brought dozens of professionals every year whom were able to protect our heritage professionally, and with the latest research and technology. Since the first year we made summer campaigns immersions where students and professors worked together for a month in a mayor site to restore a church or a large collection of artworks.


These group interactions create the best learning tools, as well as the best result for our cultural heritage. Creating strong professional networks, and trusted relationships. We advocate to this model, not just for our small region, but elsewhere in China, Europe, America or the rest of the world. Museums and governments can partner with private institutions like ours, to share knowledge, human resources, conservation and educational programs; to serve more niches in our society and advocating for a better conservancy and protection of our cultural heritage.


In a practical way we also need to create more shared-databases. Normally Museums' databases are in silos, that are not interconnected or easily accessed. On the other side, private sector should share their professional restoration studies with museums. These studies are also in silos mostly. I would like to illustrate this with a great example achieving this kind of sharing: the Interpol App “ID-Art”. This app connects to the Interpol stolen-art-pieces' database, currently around 50,000 pieces, with everyone. The app additionally allows us to create and upload art pieces, within the app, of our own collections and keep them in their database. In the worst case, a robbery, it would be able to share the stolen pieces' information directly with the Interpol.


We are just at the beginning of the digitalization, and new technologies like block-chain are to our advantage to fight against crimes. With more transparency, easy access, and less silos, we will make criminals harder to act. Technology will not just help art professionals, but the society at large.


I want to finish by expressing my gratitude to David Gosset and his team for the invitation and the organization of this fantastic dialogue, and I'm also thankful to Bin Zhao. Thank you all for your attention, and wish you enjoy the rest of today's program.

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