Fake Heritage – from Artefact to Artifice - six online talks by John Darlington

Some people will always be motivated by a desire for the adulation of crowds, or the respect of peers. The world of heritage is no different. Fame comes to the person who discovers the first humans, who breaks the tomb’s seal, or who solves a long-held mystery. And with such motivation comes temptation to shortcut the rigour of academic research or the sweat of fieldwork and to force a little luck. In this introduction to the series, John Darlington will explore examples of heritage fakery prompted by money and celebrity, including Piltdown Man (UK), The Tiara of Saitaphernes (Ukraine) and the Cardiff Giant (USA).

The replication of heritage can be prompted by artistic inspiration. Damien Hirst’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable was exhibited in Venice in 2017, an extraordinary collection of coral-encrusted sculptures and antiquities raised from a shipwreck off the coast of Africa; but it was not as it first appeared. Alternatively, aesthetics or the need to fit in or stand out, is a driver: hidden in plain sight, the subways of London, Paris and New York all use false historic facades to hide the mundanity of vents, service vaults and emergency access, while Toronto’s electricity substations, newly powered by Niagara Falls, are disguised as castles and warehouses.

Heritage is often duplicated as a vehicle for learning or simply to create places to have fun. The V&A’s Cast Courts (UK) were a means of bringing global art and architecture to an audience who would otherwise not be able to see them. In 1897 a full-size replica of the Parthenon was constructed in Nashville for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition (USA). What could be more appropriate for the ‘Athens of the South’ than the world’s most famous temple to Athena? For entertainment, head to China, the undisputed leader of copyist heritage. Not only does the country boast several replicas of the Eiffel Tower, it also possesses samples of Moscow, Washington DC, Sydney and architectural swatches from nearly every other major global city, including Venice’s canals, Egypt’s sphinxes and a double-vision version of Barry and Jones’ Tower Bridge.

Buildings are more than places to rest, work or visit; they are statements of who we were, are and want to be, doubly so when dealing with reconstructed heritage. Want an authentic medieval ruin to demonstrate your ancient lineage? Look no further than Sanderson Miller, an 18th-century gentleman architect who specialised in romantic Gothic towers, moss-covered curtain walls and ivy-clad crenelations across Britain. Religion too, can be a driver for replication, as beautifully illustrated by the Ise Jingu shrine (Japan) which is the 62nd version of the same temple complex that has been in place since 690 CE.

War or earthquake, fire or tsunami, the impact of catastrophic loss on heritage brings about many different responses. For some, disaster can only be healed by rebuilding like-for-like, yet for others this is to ignore history and create pastiche heritage. This talk will explore contrasting examples, ranging from the reconstruction of the historic centre of Ypres after WWI (Belgium) and Frankfurt after WWII (Germany) through to the deliberate preservation of Coventry’s old medieval cathedral (UK) after it was largely destroyed in a Luftwaffe raid in 1940.

Nowhere is heritage fakery more passionately debated than by the profession that purports to be its gatekeeper. In the final talk of the series, John Darlington will look at how the prehistoric art decorating the walls of caves such as Chauvet, Lascaux (France) and Altamira (Spain) or the Tomb of Tutankhamen (Egypt) is made accessible through hyper-accurate duplicates, while the real thing remains accessible only to a handful of experts. As a post-script to the series, he will reflect on the value and dangers of heritage duplication in an increasingly sophisticated, but naive world.