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It’s good to see art conservation appear in a work of fiction that is not a mystery or espionage novel

By Rebecca Rushfield posted 03-25-2019 08:32

  

Towards the end of, “Landfall”, a novel by Thomas Mallon about the Bush administration in the years 2005- 2007, Allison O’Connor, a staff member of the National Security Council visits the National Gallery in Kabul, Afghanistan where she sees restored paintings and meets a young Afghan man who is training as an art “conservationist” and a young American woman who is teaching him with sponsorship from  a grant from the fictional NEAH (National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities).  While Mallon conflates the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities’ assistance in the preservation of Iraqi heritage with the British Council ‘s funding of the conservation assessment  of damaged paintings from the Afghan National Art Gallery by Afghans working with international paintings conservators, it’s good to see art conservation appear in  a work of fiction that is not a mystery or espionage novel.
#conservationfiction

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