Journeys Through Our Fragile Heritage: discover, preserve, transmit

Image: Alessandro Benedetti
Image: Alessandro Benedetti
Image: Alessandro Benedetti
Image: Alessandro Benedetti
Image: Alessandro Benedetti
Image: Alessandro Benedetti

Institutional Communication Service

18 May 2018

The photo exhibition 'Journeys through our Fragile Heritage' will be showcased on the facade of the Lugano campus Informatics Building. From a project by Wikimedia and UNESCO it highlights the beauty and fragility of our common heritage. It landed at USI thanks to the cooperation between the UNESCO chair, founded and directed by Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni, and the Swiss commision for UNESCO. The opening of the exhibition will be public and it will take place on Monday, May 28 at 6pm (room A13, Lugano campus) with the participation of Boas Erez (USI Rector ), Roberto Badaracco (Head of the department for culture, sports and events, City of Lugano), Carlo Ossola (Federal office for the environment, and member of the UNESCO Swiss Commission), and Lorenzo Cantoni (UNESCO Chair in Information and Communication Technologies for the development and promotion of sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites).

The photo exhibition is organised within the framework of the #Unite4Heritage (www.unite4heritage.org) campaign, a global movement launched in 2015 by UNESCO with the aim of celebrating and protecting cultural heritage, calling on everyone to report destruction by groups of extremists, and making everyone understand that the responsibility to safeguard cultural heritage lies in the hands of each individual. USI UNESCO Chair is one of the main supporters of this project on social media, through the #faces4heritage campaign (https://twitter.com/Faces4Heritage).

The exhibit illustrates the richness and diversity of a heritage that belongs to eveyone and that needs help to be preserved and passed on to future generations. Intentional destruction, negligence, intensive tourism and uncontrolled economic development, ignorance and poor maintenance jeopardizes much of our cultural heritage and diversity. This exhibition shows threatened cultural heritage, both built and intangible, and reports illicit trafficking of artworks. 

The exhibition was first shown in Paris and in other capitals such as Rome, Montréal and Stockholm, and then landed in Switzerland on the UN building in Geneva.

Lugano is the second Swiss stop. After USI, in the end of June, the exhibition will be moved to the perimeter area of Parco Ciani in collaboration with the department of events and conferences of the City of Lugano (Divisione Eventi e Congressi) to become part of the 'Long Lake Festival' and 'Lugano Arte Urbana'. The exhibition is also part of the activities of the USI MEM (usi.ch/mem) - Middle East Mediterranean Freethinking Platform - as an additional effort to foster public debate and promote awareness of the current situation in the region.

Faculties

Sections