Opening comments

First of all, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share with you my comments on issues 20 and 21 of Intervención. Revista Internacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museología, and at the same time celebrate a decade of uninterrupted work and the prologue to the next decade. It is a ridge in time, like standing on the Equator with one foot in the northern hemisphere and another in the southern hemisphere-which seems to me a good analogy for the two issues in question. Furthermore, thank you to Isabel Medina-González, Carolusa González Tirado, and Paula Rosales-Alanís, present and committed collaborators in giving this-their beloved academic project-continuity and life.

This opportunity fills me with emotion because Intervención is one of those periodicals whose every issue we await knowing that there will always be at least one article specifically related to the areas that are of particular importance to us, and if this is not the case, then there is sure to be some work to open horizons or show new paths and interpretations in the appreciation, defense, conservation, and knowledge of cultural heritage. Now, on to the review.

On issue 20, i would like to comment...

First, that it begins with a splendid EDITORIAL that briefly outlines the history of the discipline of conservation, the importance of the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía (ENCRyM), and a detailed review of the editorial efforts undertaken by these areas of knowledge to state, better than I could, the necessary contexts for the journal Intervención. Speaking of museums, we have the participation of Nicole Andrea González and her text “Women Museum in Mexico City: a Museological Reflection of its History, Mexico,” which draws attention to the work and disciplines of museums, making visible the gender issues that, unfortunately, in these times remain hidden in Mexico behind the agenda imposed by the coronavirus.

Another article among those that open the discussion on issues that have yet to attract attention is that of Ana Paula García, entitled “Identification of Adhesives in Paper Laminates and Conservation Recommendations for the Old Collection of the National Library of Anthropology and History (BNAH), Mexico,” which refers to a critical analysis of restoration techniques applied to documentation in more or less recent times, and the reflection it deserves to receive to realign positions toward the future. This is in addition to implementing scientific techniques such as the Fourier Transform-Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. Therefore, the work of a group of eight academics from different institutions is appreciated: “Material Witness of a Missing Altarpiece: Panel Painting Set from the Former Convent of San Francisco Tepeyanco, Tlaxcala, Mexico.” Like the previous work, this one makes visible an increasingly powerful synergy, in this case, presented by Nathael Cano, Alejandra Quintanar-Isaías, José Luís Ruvalcaba-Sil, Edgar Casanova, Manuel E. Espinosa, Ana Teresa Jaramillo, María Angélica García, and Jazziel Lumbreras. It concerns a 16th-century ruin and its multiple transformations over time, until it became the remains of a 16th-century altarpiece, later repainted and almost destroyed, to contextualize it with the knowledge of conservation, history, art history, and scientific analyses, and to reconstruct it, formulate hypotheses, and restore values and importance to objects that would otherwise be lost in time.

Here, many people come together, and, fortunately, the article is only a summary of a longer work. I say this because the simple orchestration of people and techniques, its financial cost, and the many hours of discussion to put together hypotheses and results make this important article an undoubtedly attractive hook to attract bigger fish.

The vulnerability of Mexican cultural heritage has serious causes: theft, fire, earthquakes, or simple neglect. All of them remind us how we must always be on guard to lessen their power. This reminder is reinforced when it takes the form of an article such as the one entitled “The Approximation of an Analytical Evaluation to a Real Seismic Effect: the Case of the Temple of Santa Lucía, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico;” by Carla Ángela Figueroa, José Manuel Jara, and Miguel Ángel Pacheco. The earthquakes of 2017 are a watershed that has left terrible marks, although also questions and advances that, as a whole, have led to a general reflection on how to act in cases of emergency. This is a vital issue, even more so because direct human action adds more general problems, such as global warming or natural disasters. The big in the small; a specific study reminds us of these factors.

Another contribution is the research of Alejandra Panozzo “Visiting Art Museums. What Attracts Weekend Visitors to Tour the Evita-Ferreyra Palace Museum in Cordoba, Argentina?” Since it is an international topic, it reminds us of an important issue: that conservation carried out in and from Mexico has always had and will continue to have a global outlook.

THE EXHIBITION REVIEW section has a text written by Alejandra Mosco about the long term, commemoration, and revision from the present of a centennial collection: “A Look at the exhibition Essences, riches, and secrets. 100 Years Guarding the Heritage, in the Regional Museum of Guadalajara (MRG), Mexico.” The book review section has one written by José Rubén Páez-Kano and José Álvaro Zárate, which invites us to read the text The new alchemists: a sociology of restoration from Mexico by Alfredo Vega Cárdenas.

The problems posed by this issue generate interesting combinations: scientific disciplines, thoughts about conservation, people who come from many parts of Mexico or abroad, and the backdrop of a highly consolidated activity regarding how everything adapts to the academic discourse.

On issue 21...

With everything I have said about issue 20, Intervención 21 is even more robust and grew not only in the number of pages, having gone from 71 to 368, but also in complexity and everything involved in creating an utterly bilingual version. Its editorial design had to adjust to these transformations, and already from the index, we can appreciate a more explicit division in the sections and their articles, adjusting the whole journal to a map that helps the reader know where they are. There is also a detail that will become more common for those of us who write in journals with these characteristics: the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) of each article gains the addition of the Open Researcher and Contribution ID (ORCID) of each author, which leads to univocal management of their information organized on the internet.

Issue 21 opens with the usual editorial, this time written by Cintia Velázquez Marroni, who warns us of the changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, which, by the way, forces us to review how we are facing it. I think that, at best, the global pandemic has meant for most of us a change of plans and a learning process about our relationships of closeness and distance, of moods and affections, as had never been seen on a global scale, at least for as long as I can remember. Cintia also warns of the substantial changes I mentioned above and, like me, makes a brief mention of the articles in the issue, namely:

The HOMAGE section, this time under the charge of Isabel Medina-González, dedicates long and deserved pages to Sergio Arturo Montero Alarcón, “[b]efore the curtain-fall of [his] beautiful life” (2020, p. 14), a renowned and relentless personality in the conservation of Mexican heritage, with a career of more than 45 years in the INAH. An iconic figure we can recognize from letters and images. The ESSAY section has another significant text entitled “Background for the Professionalization of Conservation in Mexico: Cultural Diplomacy and Heritage Policies” by Ana Garduño, which shows how the consolidation of the public image of Mexico favored the foundations on which the identity and public image of the country are presented abroad, forming the substrate to answer why some national institutions were consolidated as direct agents of that public policy.

We are barely a third into issue 21 of Intervención, and I fear that time, a formidable executioner, and the way I have tried to highlight the many successes in order to interest the general and specialized reading public in more avidly reading this journal are not going to allow me to finish with an adequate description of what is left. I can tell you that the RESEARCH section has relevant contributions, such as the call for attention to “collective cataloging in art museums” made by Joaquín Barriendos, and the double-edge that links the curator’s collection knowledge with the information technologies called upon to manage their complexity. There is also the text that deals with the “Management of Delicate Cultural Materials: the Human Remains of the Museo Etnográfico Municipal Dámaso Arce, Olavarría, Argentina” by María Gabriela Chaparro, Pamela García, and Rocío Guichón. The article by Camilo de Mello and David Felipe Suárez regarding “The Maré Museum: the New Social Museology from a critical perspective,” from Brazil, the study on “The pajarete Construction System in Traditional Housing in the State of Colima, Mexico”, by Antonio Flores and Minerva Rodríguez, or the “Considerations on the Vulnerability of Architectural Heritage. Case Study: the Church of El Sagrario, Cuenca, Ecuador”, are all texts that evidence the global interest in heritage, a living concern that is becoming increasingly important in what Intervención publishes.

Still to be mentioned are the EVENT REVIEW section, in which Alfredo Ortega-Ordaz takes part, and the BOOK REVIEW section, with a text by María Rosa Ruiz Cerevera and María Ximena Agudo Guevara, whom I mention quickly because I am running out of time and breath.

But I would not like to conclude without meditating, with all of you, on the loving affection and innumerable hours of work that we see translated with such power. When scrolling through the pdf of issue 21, the pages go by and by, at length, like a modern papyrus; they would not be possible without so much passion from every person who works at Intervención: its editors, those in charge of editorial production, design, style correction, and translation. Its well-founded editorial and scientific committees, peer-reviewers, and authors; everyone plays an essential role in a journal that, as I said, we await each semester, eager to see what new things it has to offer us to think about and learn, always more and better, about the conservation of our heritage.