Conservation principles

A very well respected and senior member of the international
conservation community recently stated the following:

   "It is my belief that 'minimum-intervention' is an institutional
    ploy to save money and to cover up a lack of skills."

This fundamental tenet of professional conservation, which functions
with "reversibility", is related directly to the ethical acceptance
of "non-like" restoration. This is reflected in a wide variety of
material applications in conservation education and training today;
for example, the use of synthetic resins (commonly known as car-body
filler in the UK) to replace wood-carvings and as a general
wood-substitute in loss-compensation, the use of Paraloid B72 as a
surface-coating in place of oil, wax or shellac, the use of digital
photography to replace missing veneers and so on.

Therefore, can anyone disprove this assertion by providing me with
examples of "non-like" restoration (such as those listed above) that
require greater practical expertise to apply?

Also, comments on the following is welcome: Are "minimum
intervention" and "reversibility"  conservation"s big cover-up--as
the citation above suggests?

Frank Hassard
PhD Research, Faculty of Design
Buckinghamshire Chilterns University
c/o Brunel University, United Kingdom


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 19:60
                  Distributed: Thursday, June 15, 2006
                       Message Id: cdl-19-60-016
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