The Future of Lost Heritage: From Ruins to Digital Reconstructions of the Future

15:00 — 16:20 (May 21)
Moscow Museum
Lecture Hall
Cinema

#heritage_preservation
#museum_technologies


Case Study Presentation

Cultural heritage is a fragile matter that can be destroyed by time, wars, natural disasters, and human interference. Many great monuments have already disappeared or stand on the verge of being lost, raising a crucial question for the global community: how to preserve what’s already gone, and is restoration even possible?
Working with lost heritage demands innovative methods and tools. Modern technologies — digital modelling, 3D scanning, and augmented reality — now enable the reconstruction of vanished objects.
Yet heritage preservation concerns more than technique — it’s about historical memory. Museums play a key role in defining narratives of loss: deciding what merits reconstruction versus what remains as testament to trauma and experience. They create cultural frameworks that teach societies how to remember, interpret, and pass on complex heritage as living collective memory.

• How to interpret the past: preserve memory of lost heritage or memory of the events that caused its destruction?
• How do museums conceptualize lost heritage?
• How does our perception of authenticity change when encountering reconstructed objects?

Speakers:
Sergey Bryun, General Director, Novgorod Museum-Reserve
Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director, State Hermitage Museum
Dmitry Sergeev, Director General, The Grabar Art Conservation Centre
Lotfy Abdel Hamid, Deputy Director, National Museum of Egyptian Civilization
Nitaya Kanokmongkol, Executive Director, Office of National Museums (Thailand)