Risk management, value and decision-making

Summary In over three decades of teaching at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York, the author has explored a number of organizing principles to synthesize the vast body of materials science encountered in the conservation of cultural property. Among these has been the concept of risk management as defined by various committees of the National Academy of Sciences. This led logically to the question of value and values. In the recent past, the author has engaged in interdisciplinary dialogue with economists, mathematicians and political scientists, considering mechanisms of decision-making in the preservation of cultural property. Using selected examples drawn from the assignments the author has given his students, the evolution in his teaching methods and the parallel evolution of the discipline of conservation are examined.