The Valencian Department of Culture has begun to move the works of art stored in the Generalitat warehouses in the town of Riba-roja that have suffered the effects of Dana, “to determine their state and level of damage and proceed with their restoration if necessary,” as reported in a note.
The regional secretary of Culture, Pilar Tébar, the general director of Culture, Miquel Nadal; and the director of the IVCR+i Institut Valencià de Conservació, Restauració i Investigació, Gemma Contreras, visited the facilities on Friday to see first-hand the damage caused in These warehouses house some 200 works from the Generalitat Contemporary Art Collection; some pieces from the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM)mostly sculptures, as well as a paper archive with catalogs and other publications related to the area of Culture.
Tébar pointed out that, although the Riba-roja facilities have also been affected by Dana, all the works of art contained in these warehouses «they are protected by boxes with legs or placed on pallets, and that also have a thick layer of fireproof protection». “But it will not be until the next few days when the status of the works can be determined,” he stated.
lor more urgent “is to move all works to a safe environment where they can be evaluated in optimal conditions,” he stressed. An emergency contract has been made with a company specializing in transportation, assembly and treatment of works of art that is taking all the pieces to an empty warehouse, to avoid contamination.
The Ministry has created a commission of technicians in order to supervise these actions, thus guaranteeing the safety of the works of art.
Archives and libraries
On the other hand, Culture technicians are visiting municipal archives and libraries that are in an unhealthy situation due to the effects of the floods, in order to know the extent of the damage and assess possible solutions to address them. .
These inspections are being carried out jointly between the IVCR+i and the Archives Service, and consist of the diagnosis of damage, prospects for saving the documentation, and documentation of the scope.
From the beginning, the Department has had the permanent collaboration of the College of Archivists and Librarians and those responsible for the Kingdom Archive.
On Thursday, the town of Alfafar was visited, where the Historical Archive has suffered enormous damage and on Friday inspections were carried out in the archives of Alaquàs, Albal, Aldaia and Beniparrel. Today we will continue with Massanassa.
Risk and emergency plans in Heritage
It is planned that these visits will continue in the coming days in order to have an “as precise as possible” x-ray of the situation both in the archives and libraries and in the rest of the cultural spaces, which will allow an adjusted damage assessment to be carried out to determine the means that will be activated within the framework of both the National Heritage Risk and Emergency Management Plan and the Generalitat’s own plan.
The Ministry reminds us that a provisional damage assessment form caused by Dana to cultural property has been enabled to be able to transfer any relevant information related to the state of the cultural property.
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