4.

2 Change
Over
An International Journal

Time
of conservation and
the built environment
Fall 2014
 RIEGLS MODERN CULT OF MONUMENTS AND THE
PROBLEM OF VALUE

MICHELE L AMPRAKOS
University of MarylandCollege Park

Figure 1. The site of the former episcopium, believed to have been destroyed by arson in 1924. (Jonathan
Blower, 2011)

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 The Venice Charter (1964) reaffirmed the historicist principles of the Athens Charter (1931), recasting them in
terms of universal values. In the intervening decades, critics of the Venice Charter have attacked many of its
premises, in particular, its focus on material authenticity. In response, some representatives of official discourse
have retrencheddefending the objective validity of the charter, while expanding the range of values that
guides its application. In essence, they have attempted to reconcile notions of the monument inherited from the
Enlightenment with the postmodern idea of multiple and shifting values. The result has been an ever-expanding
definition of the monumentwithout serious questioning of the underlying principles that guide its treatment.
Alois Riegls classic essay The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin (1903) is often
cited as the first, and most profound, formulation of values-based preservation. Yet few have analyzed this
dense and tremendously influential essay in its historical context. It is rarely noted that Riegls essay was in fact
the introduction to a draft preservation law, which he wrote soon after his appointment as Conservator General
for the Austrian State. An art historian, lawyer, and museum curator, Riegl wrote his essay with a practical aim:
to develop a method for managing the growing body of antiquities in the charge of the state. When studied
together with the draft law, it is clear that Riegl did not intend for relative values to replace older notions of
value, but rather, to supplement them. As such, the contradictions of contemporary theory and practice were
inherent in Riegls own project. This paper argues that we must reassess this project and its legacy if we are to
escape the current quandary of preservation.

The Venice Charter (1964) reaffirmed the historicist principles of the Athens Charter
(1931), recasting them in terms of universal values. Since then, critics of the Venice Char-
ter have attacked many of its premises, in particular, its focus on material authenticity.
In response, some representatives of ofcial discourse have retrencheddefending the
objective validity of the charter, while expanding the range of values that guides its
application. In essence, they have attempted to reconcile notions of the monument inher-
ited from the Enlightenment with the postmodern idea of multiple and shifting values.
The result has been an ever-expanding denition of the monumentwithout serious
questioning of the underlying principles that guide its treatment. Ever larger and more
complex objectsvernacular building types, neighborhoods, and landscapesare treated
according to the same museological standards once reserved for monuments and art
objects. This process has, in effect, frozen large swathes of the built environment in
timea situation that is unsustainable in cultural, social, and economic terms.1 Even
those who are sympathetic to a more inclusive denition of heritage worry about the
rampant relativism that may ultimately undermine the project of preservation itself.2
Alois Riegls classic essay The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin

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 (1903) is often cited as the rst and most profound formulation of values-based preserva-
tion. This tremendously inuential essay is generally seen as the beginning of the modern
approach to monuments.3 Yet few have analyzed this dense and tremendously inuential
essay in its historical context.4 The essay was in fact the introduction to a draft preserva-
tion law, which Riegl wrote soon after his appointment to the Austrian monuments com-
mission. Informed by his training in law and art history and by his experience as a
museum curator, it is a carefully crafted treatise with a practical aim: to outline a method
for managing the growing body of antiquities in the charge of the state. Some scholars
attribute the problems of preservation to Riegls successors who, they say, have misread
Riegl or failed to assimilate his insights.5 This essay will argue that, on the contrary, the
dilemma of modern preservation theory and practice was inherent in Riegls own project.
Riegls ideas about the monument have been widely discussed, in particular, his grasp
of the sociohistorical dimensions of preservationthat is, how attitudes to monuments
have developed over time.6 Riegl (18581905) was a brilliant historian, afliated with the
Vienna School and its radical rethinking of the history of art. In the nineteenth century,
art history had been told through the lens of universal ideals of beauty and aesthetics: the
development of art was framed in terms of major and minor periods, of conformance to
the ideal and deviation from it. Riegl disputed this view: he argued that both the produc-
tion and reception of art are, like other spheres of human endeavor, subject to historical
development. They emerge from the Kunstwollena difcult and much-debated term,
sometimes translated as the will to art of a particular age.7 Riegl turns the traditional
view of the monument on its head, as it were; he argues that the monument is dened
not by xed, objective criteria, but rather by the perceptions of the viewing subject. At the
end of his life, during his brief association with the Austrian monuments commission,
Riegl applied his ideas to the monument, in draft legislation and in a number of articles
and opinions.
Riegl proposed an evolutionary sequence of these changing perceptions in the essay
that we know as The Modern Cult of Monumentsactually the theoretical introduction
to his draft law. He identies these perceptions with certain stages in human history,
which, however, may coexist in a given period (a key point to which we will return; Fig.
2). A monument may be seen as the bearer of collective memory (that is, in terms of what
Riegl calls its commemorative value), as an historical document (historical value), or as
testimony to the endless cycle of life and decay (age value). These past valuesrooted
in the past or history of the monumentoften conict with what Riegl calls present
values: that is, changing tastes (relative art value) or the expectation that a building
should meet human needs (use value). The public might also impose upon a monument
the desire for newness, which in the nineteenth century meant reconstruction according
to an idealized period or style (newness value). Thus any act of preservationwhich is
inherently a self-conscious and creative actmust negotiate these often conicting values.
From the very beginning, it seems, there was a tendency to separate the introductory,
theoretical preamble from the legislative provisions that followed it. Two versions of the
essay were published in 1903: one consisting of the introductory essay, and a second

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 Figure 2. An interpretation of Riegls evolutionary scheme of values. (Michele Lamprakos)

unabridged version that appeared under the imprint of the Central Commission. The latter
was entitled Project for the Legislative Organization of the Protection of Monuments in Aus-
tria.8 When Riegls collected essays were published in 1929, the volume included only the
theoretical introduction. This truncated version was canonized in the English language
journal Oppositions in 1982.9 As for the legislative provisions, they have never been trans-
lated into English. The tendency to read the introductory essay in isolation has led, as one
scholar puts it, to fantastic conclusions regarding Riegls intentionsin particular, the
presumed disjuncture between his theoretical and practical concerns.10 The essay is rou-
tinely taught in historic preservation programs in the United States, with little or no
reference to Riegls theories of art history and with little mention of his legislative aims.
Art historians, for their part, have been interested in the essay because of Riegls links to
the avant garde.11 As such, they have tended to ignore his legislative project and its con-
crete implications. The aim of this paper is to bridge these perspectives through a critical
reading of the text.

Riegls Project for the Legislative Organization of the Protection of

Monuments in Austria
By the mid-nineteenth century, a number of European countries had formed commissions
to oversee the preservation of monuments and antiquities. In Austria, the Royal and Impe-
rial Central Commission for the Research and Preservation of Artistic and Historic Monu-
ments was established in 1850, in consultation with the Prussian state. As in most
countries, the Central Commission was merely an advisory body, lacking the legislative
means to enforce policy.12 When Riegl joined the Central Commission, the debate over
the appropriate nature and extent of intervention had been going on for decades. In the
nineteenth century, the favored approach to monuments was restoration, that is, the

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 reconstruction of the monument in its presumed original condition. Restoration was ini-
tially carried out according to the principle of stylistic unity (Stilenheit), and later in the
century, purity of style (Stilreinheit). Both of these approaches drew on the increasing
knowledge of ancient buildings made available by archeological and historical research.
Buildings were returned to their original formrestored in period styleand later
accretions were stripped away. Around the turn of the twentieth century, a kind of con-
sensus developed against stylistic restoration: historic buildings should be treated as doc-
uments of the past, their original form and materials carefully conserved. Patrimony came
to be identied with the collective, which was now responsible for maintaining and
protecting it.13 The debate was heavily politicized, colored by church-state relations and
identity politics in the conicted Austro-Hungarian Empire.14 Riegls ideas about the
monument reected the contemporary debatein particular, the ideas of Ruskin, whose
Seven Lamps of Architecture had appeared in German translation in 1900 and was heartily
embraced by the antirestoration school (including members of the Vienna Secession).15
Signicantly, Riegl trained rst as a lawyer; he subsequently abandoned law and took
up the study of art, history, and philosophy. His theories of art took shape during his
tenure as curator of the Museum of Art and Industry, a position that he held for fourteen
years (188397).16 He left the museum for a teaching position at the University of Vienna;
from his lectures came a number of publications, the most famous of which is The Late
Roman Art Industry (1901), in which he challenged the accepted notion of stylistic decline
at the end of antiquity.17 He assumed the position of Conservator General of Monuments
several years later, in 1903. Few scholars have explored the obvious connection between
his experience in the curatorial management of artifacts and his theoretical work.18
In 1902 Riegl, then coeditor of the journal of the Central Commission, wrote a piece
for the Neue Freie Presse on the controversy over the portal of St. Stephans Cathedral, the
so-called Riesentor.19 Both the Central Commission and the church favored the removal of
the Gothic portal to reveal the Romanesque portal beneath; the latter represented the
only surviving Romanesque remains of a structure that had been fully gothicized. Riegl
sided with the members of the Secession who opposed the restoration, but did so in a
balanced and diplomatic wayidentifying the various values and interests of all parties
concerned. As a result of this exercise, he was appointed Conservator General, the rst
such salaried position at the Central Commission. In this position, Riegl was charged with
the institutional restructuring of the protection of monuments. The resulting work
Project for the Legislative Organization of Monument Preservation in Austriaconsists of
three parts: the introductory essay; a draft law; and instructions for interpreting and
applying the law.
Riegl is perhaps best known for challenging the traditional canon of art history,
which saw the classical era as the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Riegl understood art
history as the history of perception: that is, the changing relationship between the viewing
subject and the object. Like his predecessors, Riegl posits an evolutionary schemabut
one based on increasing subjectivity in art, rather than progress toward an artistic ideal.
In essence, Riegl recasts art history in terms of the theory of historicism: all cultural

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products are expressions of the Kunstwollen, of the will to art, that characterizes a partic-
ular place and time. But there is a catch. While each age has its own mode of artistic
representation, it may include modes from previous eras. Riegls typology of pictorial
modes, writes Michael Gubser, was not a set of exclusive categories but, rather, a group
of recombinant traits and temporalities that generated new pictorial forms according to
the Kunstwollen of the period.20 The theory of historical evolution implies that previous
stages have been superseded. But Riegl astutely argues that these stages do not succeed
one anotherrather they encompass one another. The same would be true for perceptions
of the monument. Our modern view of art, Riegl writes, rejects the notion of an objectively
valid canon.21 If values are relative, rather than absolute, the canon must be expanded to
include the cultural products of various places and times.22 This implies a potentially in-
nite expansion of the canonand with it, the denition of the monument.
The evolving perception of the monument, writes Riegl, is driven by the desire to
transcend an objective physical and psychic perception in favor of subjective experience.
Increasing subjectivity leads to the wider appeal of the monument: from the narrow inter-
ests of the maker we proceed to the academic interest of the art historian (historical
value); and nally to the more general interest of the public (age value).23 Age value ulti-
mately transcends other values, and thus both originality and unity of style.24 This proc-
ess reects for Riegl the broader emancipation of the individual in modern times.25 The
appeal and inclusiveness of age value is based on emotion rather than intellect: the viewer
sees in the decaying monument evidence of his own mortality. The individual is emanci-
patedthat is, brought into cultureon the basis of his emotions, much as the masses
were civilized by Christianitys emotional rendering of Greek philosophy.26 Echoing Ruskin
and William Morris, Riegl called his preservation legislation socialistic, based on the rule
of mass feelings over the intellect and individual interests. For Riegl, the modern cult of
monuments challenged the notion of private property, as it had for Ruskin and Morris.

Theory and Practice

Riegls radical historicism insisted on the cultural and temporal relativity of perception,
and hence of value.27 He overtly opposed another kind of historicism: the factual, archeo-
logical approach to art history that had, however, constituted his own training. Neverthe-
less, he aspired to positivism: his goal was to establish what he called a science of art
history that would in effect be a history of perception.28 In order to write this history of
subjectivity, he relied on what he believed to be an empirical method: the gathering of
data from the formal study of works of art. This data would make evident the Kunstwollen
of a particular place and time. In a theory that aimed at establishing the relativity of all
artistic judgments, Kunstwollen was, in Riegls words, the only secure datum.29 Reminis-
cent of the Hegelian spirit, Riegl believed that Kunstwollen had its counterpart in other
spheres of society and culture, and could eventually be established with scientic evidence.
Riegls work must be understood in the historical context of n-de-siecle Vienna. His
attempt to write a history of subjectivity through an ostensibly objective or empirical
method mirrored contemporary efforts in aesthetics and psychology.30 It was also part of

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 a general movement to revise the Enlightenment project. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the documentary project of the Enlightenment had undermined itself through
the sheer quantity of data and artifacts that it had accumulated, from excavations, from
texts, and from its colonies. This material had begun to overwhelm the museum, which
would have to become an innitely expandable container for artistic products.31 The desire
to classify had itself generated the identication of styles and periods as morphological
and historiographical categories, but these categories were increasingly subverted by the
hybrid objects that deed them.
Riegls theories of art history were formed while he was facing this crisis directly, as
a museum curator. The crisis of the classicatory approach suggested a need to challenge
conventional periodization, as well as a normative and exclusive aesthetic. In order to
apprehend the multiplicity of artistic production, there had to be a shift from the qualities
of the object to the qualities of the viewing subject.32 The notion of relative value was not
new: Romanticism had already recognized the relative value of art, as well as the special
appeal of age. Nineteenth-century historicism insisted on the historicity of all knowledge
and all forms of cognition. But these ideas had not unseated the ideals embodied in the
classical tradition.33 Riegls contribution consisted in the application of these ideas to the
emerging eld of art history, where he used them to challenge the supremacy of the estab-
lished canon.

Age Value in the Modern Cult of Monuments

Riegl outlines three consecutive stages in the perception of the monument: commemora-
tive value, historical value, and age value. Each successive stage represents a more highly
evolved perception of the monument. Originally dened by the narrow interests of the
maker, the monument comes to be valued on the basis of its historical and academic
interest for the art historian. Now in the modern era, it is valued for its age, and hence
for its emotional appeal to the masses. In contrast to historical value, which links the
monument to a particular national style, age value is appreciated by all and thus tran-
scends narrow allegiances. Age value does not necessarily suggest that a monument be
preserved for eternity, but rather that it expose to the public the circular course of becom-
ing and passing away; [this] is guaranteed even if monuments that exist today are replaced
in the future by other monuments.34 But Riegl undoes the eternal cycle of becoming and
passing away through an intricate, legalistic legerdemain.
Our modern view, writes Riegl, rejects the notion of an objectively valid canon
because it is based on relative perception.35 Age value derives from this modern view, since
it is

in principle independent of other values, especially [values of] material, technical

execution, destination, and historical and artistic signicance. To state this in other
words, in terms of age value all monuments are equal. . . . From this we can deduce
two principles of protective legislation: 1.) Every work of the hand of man, solely by
the fact that is a monument, i.e. has existed for a certain amount of time, enjoys

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 the right of protection; 2.) the state is charged with the execution of this protec-
tion.36

Not only the monument itself, but the traces of age it has acquired over the course of its
existence must be preserved, since they are the source of its age value. Riegl thus codies
the notion of material authenticity, expressed by Ruskin decades earlier, as a fundamental
principle of preservation practice.37
Although the law exempts private property, Riegl urges the state to make efforts to
acquire monuments held by private citizens. All such buildings are to be registered in a
state inventory and must not be destroyed, transformed, or sold without the permission
of the responsible authority.38 Following French practice, Riegl distinguishes between
classied and unclassied monuments. The former are monuments of exceptional
quality or of extraordinary artistic-historical signicance or general historical signicance,
as well as monuments that possess extensive age value.39 Classied monuments are over-
seen by the central authority, made up of experts in the historical sciences. Regional
authorities, made up of bureaucrats and technicians, are charged with the evaluation of age
value and care of unclassied monuments. While the latter may allow some concessions to
contemporary values (newness value, art value, and use value), these values are generally
excluded from the cult of monuments.40 The care of monuments, writes Riegl,

until now entrusted essentially to creative artists, who have had to reestablish the
originality and lost stylistic unity of monuments, in the future will be provided by
historians, who will have to judge and evaluate their historical value as well as their traces
of age, and the technicians, who will have to determine and implement the appropriate
measures for the conservation of the monument and the traces of the old that are existing
in it. There is a place for the artist as such only if he is at the same time an historian
and a technician . . . [S]uch a change in the organization of the care of monuments
will not dispossess the artist, as might be supercially thought, but rather will liber-
ate and greatly enlarge the eld of his activity.41

Age value represents the highest stage in the perception of the monument and the
basis for modern preservation.42 But it does not invalidate earlier values. Despite our
enthusiasm for age value, Riegl explains, we are still not free of historical value [and thus
are not] insensitive to a higher valuation of a monument based on age. Even nationalistic
or patriotic value, which mixes historical value with intentionality, must be considered
despite it being antiquated. Therefore we must admit the existence of exceptional works,
the premature destruction of which would displease us more than the destruction of
others.43 Thus each consecutive stage does not transcend the former: rather, it encom-
passes it. Outwardly these three classes of monuments, writes Riegl, can be thought of
as contained within one another, while the scope of their memory-value widens.
The monument built for a specic purpose (the commemorative or intentional monu-
ment) will remain a monument after its specic purpose has been forgotten: it becomes

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 an unintentional monument. Historical monuments, in turn, come to be valued for a more
general, and democratic, age value.44 In Riegls system, then, the criterion of signicance
thus survived alongside age valueeven though the two derive from notions of history
that are fundamentally opposed. The concept of signicance derives from the positivist
view that meaning, and hence value, are inherent in the object.45 Riegls theory insisted
that value is not inherent in the object, but rather derives from the changing relationship
between the viewer and the object. This contradiction has led to the current paradox:
preservation legislation allows a more inclusive denition of heritage yet does not chal-
lenge the validity of the canon, which continues to be defended on the basis of signi-
cance.46
While celebrating the destruction of the canon and the liberation of the minor arts
from the major arts, Riegl recognized the implications for the curatorial management of
artifacts and monuments. The expansion of valuesand hence of the canonled to a
potentially innite number of monuments: The danger of over accumulating an incalcula-
ble mass . . . of minor objects . . . is to be prevented with the determination of an age limit
of sixty years [after which] works may be categorized as monuments.47
Monuments were thus no longer to be selected according to qualitative criteria, since
all were equal in terms of age value; but their quantity was to be controlled through the
establishment of a sixty-year threshold. Riegl admits that the choice of sixty years was
arbitrary; it was merely a way to establish a synchronic unit of time. Clearly, Riegl the
curator would have realized that the number of monuments older than sixty years would
continue to multiply. The problem of the museum was not solved; rather its dilemma was
transferred to the city.

Age Value and Formalist Aesthetics

Riegl acknowledged that all work, including that of the scientist and the historian, is
conditioned by subjective judgment. Yet in his theoretical work, he did not acknowledge
his own subjectivity as subverting the scientic aim of his project. He repeatedly admon-
ished art historians to refrain from speculation and aesthetic judgments.48 While requiring
expert judgment in the classication of monuments, he elsewhere maintained that since
modern preservation is based on age value, there is little need for experts:

The criterion of a sixty-year limit for the registration of a work presupposes recourse
to experts (historians) only in rare cases. . . . If . . . in terms of age value all monu-
ments are equal and have the same right to protection, the criterion of artistic and
historical signicance, which has been suggested in recent proposals, would fall
away; [it is this signicance] that renders necessary values of judgment which,
particularly in the case of artistic value, also brings with it the danger of biased
evaluation.49

This language evokes the contemporary notion of pure visibility, which presumed the
almost complete detachment of the viewer in the contemplation of form.50 This mirage

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of objectivity51 has had lasting consequences for both art history and preservation: con-
strained to a stance of detachment, historians, preservationists, and legislators cannot
pass judgment on the increasing body of works that comes under their protection.
How are we to understand the structuring of Riegls project around the concept of
value? As one scholar notes, Riegl took no interest in value. He recognized no hierarchies
among the images and artifacts from the past. . . . We might think of Riegls radical
formalism as aestheticism without judgment.52 Riegl uses value in a different sense, refer-
ring to the qualities of the object as perceived by the subject.53 The term Kunstwollen,
writes Sola-Morales, must be interpreted not as a meta-historical power that produces
the artistic condition, but as an ideal relationship that permits the subject to become
mediator between knowledge that can be sensed and reality.54 In Riegls writings on art
history, the qualities or values of the work of art are generated through the interchange
between subject and object; they ultimately exist in the subjective state or perception of
the viewer. Riegls system derives from the formalist idea of pure visibility, developed by
Fiedler and Herbart, and from Vischers and Lippss ideas of empathy.55 His aim, as we
have seen, was to rewrite the history of art as the history of perception. In order to write
this history, Riegl relied on his own observations, which he believed provided empirical
data. As long as Riegls speculations remained in the realm of theory, contradictions could
be dissolved by the internal logic of the text. When applied in monuments preservation,
however, the material reality of the artifacts made the contradictions evident.
For Riegl the quality of age value is produced when the viewing subject contemplates
the traces of the old contained in the monument; the value of the monument is thus
realized through the emotions. Age value is the recognition that memory does not exist
in the form of the old, but in the old itself.56 Yet Riegls Project is devoted to preserving
the form of the old. The monument, he writes,

no longer functions as more than a substrate for scientic research, the loss of which
the scientic specialist resigns himself with little difculty; it constitutes instead the
support for the interior experience of the atmosphere of the old, the offense of which is
felt not only as unhappiness but with evident displeasure.57

The monument is thus made to be a document of the viewers subjective process,

his experience of the atmosphere of the old. Jarzombek calls this process subject-
objectication: Basically, if empathy subjectied the aesthetic process by placing thought
in the domain of feeling, subject-objectication was its antinomic companion, returning
that which was felt to the certainty of knowledge.58 In the context of preservation,
subject-objectication results in a highly problematic disjuncture. By objectifying the per-
ception of age value in the material form of the building, Riegl in effect codies the
current reading of the monument. But the building itself exists across time: it thus resists
attempts to x it as a stable point relative to changing perception.

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 The Monument as Other
The notion of age valuean attribute of the minor architecture that makes up the urban
fabricreects the growing interest in historic townscapes at the turn of the century,
particularly in German-speaking countries. Yet Riegl approached these layered and highly
complex sites with the sensibility of the curator.59 He argued that changes to the monu-
ment, and to its relationship with the surrounding context, would compromise its age
value:

[R]egistered, publically owned monuments would be . . . protected from any diminu-

tion of their age value, which can be veried in two ways: the exposure of the monu-
ment to premature destruction at the hands of atmospheric elements; and from
changes effected at the hand of man (destruction, additions or eliminations during
restoration, isolation from context or new relationship with the original context).60

While he argued against change in the monument and its context, Riegl recognized that
change that had occurred in the past produced layers that were worth preserving. On this
basis, he defended the many historic layers at Diocletians palace in Splitan argument
that, as we will see, went against half a century of Austrian restoration practice.
The problem is, of course, that buildings exist across timeand into the present. It
is in the present that we perceive them. The ongoing interchange between subject and
object, between man and his environment, never ends for Riegl the visionary art historian.
But for Riegl the curator-conservator, it ends sixty years in the past. The split between
past values and contemporary values is a key feature of Riegls legal framework, and also
its Achilles heel, because it contradicts his own theory of art history. For although age
value depends on current perception, Riegl calls it a past value; that is, it is dependent
on the buildings pastness. The existence of the monument in the present is incidental for
Riegl: once a building has existed for sixty years, it is valued above all for its age value.
One cannot help but be struck by the anxiety in Riegls repeated calls for the safe-guarding
of age value:

At the present time the law for the protection of monuments has become in Austria
a necessity, since today everyone feels that monuments have acquired age value, any
offense to which causes as much pain as the disrespect of religious principles and
symbols of faith brings to a believer.

The goal of a law for the preservation of monuments in Austria is therefore the protection
of age value of monuments, not only against injustice and bad faith, but against the other
competing values, especially against contemporary values.61
Riegls admonition against contemporary values, especially newness value, was partly
motivated by his disapproval of stylistic recreations. But it also echoes the ideas of his
contemporaries in the Austrian Secession. An historical work is necessarily characterized
by its partial, weathered, disintegrated formthat is, for its lack of wholeness. In our

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modern view, writes Riegl, the new artifact requires awless integrity of form and color
as well as of style . . . the truly modern work must recall . . . earlier works as little as possible.62
As Alan Colquhoun observes, age value and newness value

are antithetical and must be kept rigidly separate, [but] they are also complementary
and dependent on each other. This idea corresponds closely to the ideas of the mod-
ern movement, in which the preservation of historical monuments sometimes went
hand in hand with the destruction and rebuilding of the city. . . . Historical works
have here lost their meaning as part of the fabric of time and space and are preserved
as emblems of a generalized and superseded past.63

The monument, in effect, becomes one of modernitys others, an essentialized and rei-
ed entity against which we measure the inevitable march of progress.

Riegls Legacy
Far from remaining in the realm of theory, Riegls work had tremendous impact on the
discipline of preservation and on legislation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Italy, and
elsewhere.64 Riegl died in 1905, after only two years as Conservator General. His work
continued under his disciple and successor Max Dvorak, who carried out an inventory that
would form the basis for legal protection.65 Riegls short tenure at the Central Commission
meant that he had little opportunity to affect the outcome of specic projects. In 1903,
howeverat the very moment he was writing his Projecthe was asked to write an opin-
ion on the preservation of Diocletians Palace at Split on the Dalmatian coast, which had
been under Austrian control for almost a century.66 Riegls recommendations for the site
give us a sense of how he intended his values to be applied in practiceand also highlight
contradictions within his system.
The monumental remains of the palace had been progressively inlled since the sev-
enth century, forming the nucleus of the old town. At the center, just south of the cardo,
stood a peristyle, the ceremonial heart of the palace. On the eastern side of the peristyle
is Diocletians former mausoleum, which had become the cathedral of Split; to the south,
the vestibule of the palace apartments (the prothyron); and to the west, a small temple to
Jupiter. All of these buildings had been modied over the centuries; the arches of the
peristyle and the arcade surrounding the mausoleum (the peripteros) were abutted and
inlled by structures. From the third quarter of the nineteenth century, under the direc-
tion of the Central Commission, architects began to disencumber this central precinct;
archaeological documentation of the exposed remains was followed by stylistic restoration.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the commission launched a series of studies for the
next phase of work. Some members of the commissionincluding local representatives,
as well as the mayor of Splitwanted to demolish all medieval and modern buildings, to
fully expose the cathedral and create an open plaza around it.67
Riegl was asked to evaluate the structures slated for demolition. In his opinion, Riegl

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 Figure 3. Plan of the cathedral precinct at Split, before 1883. (Alois Hauser, Spalato und die romischen
Monumente Dalmatiens, Wien, Alfred Holder, 1883)

argued that the postantique buildings of Split had the right to exist (Existenzberechti-
gung). More than this, the historic town owed its very character to these minor structures,
whose incomparable and irreplaceable atmospheric charm has historically been so richly
bound up with the antique remains of the city.68 He accepted the demolition of certain
undistinguished structures, while insisting on the preservation of othersin particular,
the episcopium or Bishops house, which surrounded the cathedral on the north, blocking
the view of the cathedral from the cardo (Fig. 3). He argued that the building exhibited
commemorative, art historical, and age value in varying degrees. Signicantly, its age value
derived both from the building fabric and from its contribution to the picturesque street-
scape. Demolition of the building would reveal the cathedral all at once. Until now, wrote
Riegl,

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 it seems no one has given sufcient consideration to the possibility that the perip-
teros, due to its ruinous state (which it ought to retain in future), may present itself
more advantageously when viewed incrementally and from close quarters, in the
picturesque sense, than it would in the case of a clear and comprehensive overview
from some distance.69

The notion that a monument should reveal itself gradually is of course closely bound
up with Sittesque aesthetics, and the growing consensus against disencumbering.70 Riegls
views reversed half a century of Austrian restoration policy. As Blower has shown, the
shift was not appreciated by Spalatians. The episcopium would remain the center of the
controversy between Vienna and local ofcials until 1920, when Dalmatia became part of
the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The building was nally destroyed by re in
1924 (allegedly arson), revealing the view of the cathedral visitors see today (see Fig. 1).
Riegls opinion on the cathedral precinct shows that he did not intend for age value
to be applied indiscriminately. He evaluated each building and its contribution to the
whole with respect to multiple values. For Riegl, it is clear that age value was not merely
age, since he agreed that certain old buildings in the precinct could be demolished.
Rather age value is something more subtle and profound: it required the judgment of a
trained preservationist, like himself, not the arbitrary application of a sixty-year rule. Yet
in his Project, Riegl argued that age value would render such judgment unnecessary. Riegls
whole art historical project was founded on the realization that both the production and
reception of art are guided by changing, and ultimately subjective, values and sensibilities.
But his law eliminated the role of subjective judgmentlegislating the protection of struc-
tures solely on the basis of age. We are living with the results.

References
1. See M. Lamprakos, The Idea of the Historic City, and B. Smith, Historic Alexandria: The Next Fifty
Years, Change Over Time 4, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 839, 16886. I am grateful to Erica Naginski, Nasser
Rabbat, David DeLong, Steven Kramer, and the editors of Change Over Time for their helpful com-
ments, and to Kirsten Weiss for help with German texts. I am also thankful to Jonathan Blower for
making his recent dissertation and historic images available to me: The Monument Question in Late
Habsburg Austria: A Critical Introduction to Max Dvoraks Denkmalpege (Ph.D. diss., University of
Edinburgh, 2012).
2. F. Matero, Ethics and Policy in Conservation, Conservation: The Getty Conservation Newsletter, Mil-
lennium Edition II, 15, no. 1 (2000): 7.
3. Along with contemporary developments in Germany, see Blower, The Monument Question, 37.
Blower writes: When Ernst Bacher republished the full version of the essay in a collection of Riegls
writings on Denkmalpege in 1995, he was justied in asserting that modern conservation will have
to consider the date of the publication of this study as its year of inception.
4. In the English literature, an important exception is Margaret Olins excellent study, The Cult of
Monuments as a State Religion in Late 19th Century Austria, Wiener Jahrbuch fur Kunstgeschichte 38
(1985): 17798; and Blower, The Monument Question.
5. See, for example, Francoise Choays assessment of Riegl and his legacy in Riegl, Freud et les monu-
ments historiques: pour une approche societale de la preservation, in World Art: Themes of Unity in
Diversity (University Park, Penn., and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 799.

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 6. Choay, Riegl, Freud et les monuments historiques, 799.
7. On the notion of Kunstwollen and its relationship to history and temporality, see M. Gubser, Times
Visible Surface: Alois Riegl and the Discourse on History and Temporality in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 2006), 15163. For the wider debate on the question of progress in
the arts, see D. Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985), 9296; and A. Colquhoun, Three Kinds of Historicism, in Modernity and the Classical Tradition:
Architectural Essays, 19801987 (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1989), 315.
8. The German title is Entwurf einer gesetzlichen Organisation der Denkmalpege in Osterreich. Although
Riegls name does not appear on this second version, and the participation of a lawyer, Max Brauer,
has been mentioned, the continuity of concept and style make it clear that Riegl was the author of
the entire work (S. Scarrocchia, Il Progetto di Riforma Istitutzionale della conservazione austraica,
in Alois Riegl: teoria e prassi della conservazione dei monumenti: antologia di scritti, discorsi, rapporti
18981905, con una scelta di saggi critici, ed. S. Scarrocchia [Bologna : CLUEB, 1995], 56). The complete
text was translated into Italian by Scarrocchia in the above volume (Progetto di unorganizazzione
legislativa della tutela dei monumenti in Austria, 171236). This essay relies on Scarrocchias transla-
tion. See also Riegls 1905 article in Neue Feie Presse, February 27, 1905, entitled, Das Denmalschutg-
esetz.
9. Blower recounts this publication history in The Monument Question, 37, citing Ernst Bachers
introduction to his collected writings of Riegl: Kustwerk oder Denmal? Alois Riegl Schriften zur Denkalp-
ege (Vienna: Bohlau, 1995). The version in Oppositions was entitled The Modern Cult of Monu-
ments: Its Character and Its Origin, trans. K. Foster and D. Ghirardo, Oppositions 25 (Fall 1982):
2151. It was reprinted six years later in The Oppositions Reader: Selected Readings from A Journal for
Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 19731984 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), 62151.
10. S. Scarrocchia, Lautonomia della conservazione in forma di colloquio con Alois Riegl, Casabella 55,
no. 584 (NovemberDecember 1991): 29.
11. For the Vienna Secession, Riegls radical historicism justied continual innovation in the arts (C.
Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture [New York: Vintage Books, 1981], 23437). On the
links between Riegl and the avant-garde, see also A. Colquhoun, Newness and Age Value in Alois
Riegl, in Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays, 19801987 (Cambridge and Lon-
don: MIT Press, 1989), 21719; and D. Bogner, Empirisme et speculation: Alos Riegl et lecole vien-
noise dhistoire de lart, in Vienne: n-de-siecle et modernite (Cahiers du Musee National dArt Moderne
14) (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1984), 4647. Parallel interests were at work eight decades
later, when Riegls essay appeared in English in an issue of Oppositions devoted to Riegl. Kurt Foster
(who edited the volume and translated Riegls essay with Ghirardo) lamented the casual borrowing
of historical forms and the daylight raids on an already ransacked body of historical architecture
[which] are again becoming routine in some schools of architecture. At this juncture, he argued, it
was essential to reect on the historical insights that surrounded the rise of modernism and its
relationship to history (Monument, Memory, and the Mortality of Architecture, Oppositions 25 [Fall
1982]: 2). Fosters agenda is clear: Riegl understood that historical forms belong in the pastnot in
todays schools of architecture.
12. Blower, The Monument Question, 38. For comparison with other countries, see Olin, The Cult of
Monuments, 189.
13. For the political background, see Olin, The Cult of Monuments, 17880. W. Denslagen describes the
new consensus against restoration in German-speaking countries circa 1900 (Architectural Restoration
in Western Europe: Controversy and Continuity [Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 1994], 144).
14. See Olin, The Cult of Monuments, 18084; and Blower, The Monument Question, 5.
15. Blower, The Monument Question, 34; Olin, The Cult of Monuments, 178. Blower notes that Rus-
kins Lamp of Memory included aphorism no. 27: Architecture is to be made historical and pre-
served as such. Olin suggests that Riegls term Errinerungswerte, memorial values, may derive from
the German title of The Lamp of Memory, Die Leuchthe der Errinrung, published by Leipzig in 1900
(The Cult of Monuments, 178).
16. The museum was later renamed the Museum of Applied Arts. For a brief biography focusing on his

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 tenure at the museum and his involvement in policy toward Austrian handicrafts, see D. Reynolds,
Alois Reigl and the Politics of Art History: Intellectual Traditions and Austrian Identity in Fin-de-
Siecle Vienna (Ph.D. diss., University of California-San Diego, 1997), Chap. 1.
17. Henri Zerner, Alois Riegl: Art, Value, and Historicism, Daedalus 105, no. 1 (winter 1976): 176.
18. Ignasi de Sola-Moraless article, Toward a Modern Museum: From Riegl to Gideon, makes a start in
this direction (Oppositions, 25 [fall 1982]: 6977).
19. For an overview of the Riesentor controversy, which dates to the mid-1800s, see Blower, The Monu-
ment Question, 3036; and Olin, The Cult of Monuments, 18992. The journal was entitled Mittei-
lungen der k.k. Zentral-Kommission fur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Kunst-und historischen Denkmale.
20. Gubser, Times Visible Surface, 171.
21. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments, 47.
22. As Ivo Hlobil has argued, this aspect of Riegls work reected the growing pluralism of taste and style
at the end of the nineteenth century (Hlobil, The Decline of Stylistic Unity: Alois Riegl on Conserva-
tion, Newsletter: The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 59 [fall 1996]: 13).
23. The monument whose meaning is determined by the intentions of the maker is an intentional
monument. In contrast to the intentional monument, which has been recognized since antiquity, the
unintentional monument is a phenomenon of the modern era, constituted by the contemporary
reading of it. In the case of the intentional monument, its commemorative value has been deter-
mined by the makers, while we have dened the value of the unintentional ones (Riegl, The Modern
Cult of Monuments, 23).
24. Ibid., 46.
25. Ibid., 29.
26. Olin, The Cult of Monuments, 19496.
27. As one scholar has noted, this aspect of Riegls theory reected the growing pluralism of taste and
style at the end of the nineteenth century (Hlobil, The Decline of Stylistic Unity, 13).
28. Zerner, Alois Riegl, 177.
29. Gesammelte Aufsatze, p. 64, cited in Zerner, Alois Riegl, 182. Zerner notes that Kunstwollen
replaces the term style in Riegls writing, underlining his determination to rethink the very basis of
art history. For Zerner, Kunstwollen was a way for Riegl to formalize meaning; this allowed him an
extraordinary freedom of action in his analysis of art (183).
30. Researchers like Theodor Lipps had already proposed a science of immediate experience based on
the response of the senses. The work of Riegls contemporary, Sigmond Freud, raised the hopes of
many in the humanities, including Wolfin, that psychology would soon provide the humanities with
a rational and scientic basis (M. Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000], 40).
31. Sola-Morales, Toward a Modern Museum, 69.
32. Ibid., 6970.
33. Zerner, Alois Riegl, 179. Against the normative and allegedly antihistorical epistemologies of the
Enlightenment, especially the thought of Kant, historicism insisted on the historicity of all knowledge
and all forms of cognition. Hegels Philosophy of History was in a sense a transitional theory: while
arguing that all knowledge is historically situated, Hegel nevertheless saw history propelled forward
by a Spirit or universal. Later historicism remained indebted to Hegel while abandoning the notion of
progress (C. Thornhill, Historicism, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Art, vol. 4, ed. E. Craig [London:
Routledge, 1998], 44346).
34. Modern Cult of Monuments, cited in Wibiral, Monumento ed Interesse, in Scarrocchia, Alois Riegl:
teoria e prassi della conservazione dei monumenti, 439.
35. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments, 47.
36. Riegl, Progetto, 231 (emphasis mine). Riegls insistence on the irrelevance of material and technical
qualities of a work of art is directed at the material determinism of Semper.
37. D. Lowenthal, Art and Authenticity, 844.
38. Riegl, Progetto, 21920.
39. Ibid., 220.

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 40. See below, p. 426. Riegl outlines the organizational framework of his system (Progetto, 22830). As
Wibiral notes, he distinguishes between age value that is intensive and age value that is extensive
(Monumento ed Interesse, 43940). Some monuments may display age value more intensively, that
is, they may manifest greater evidence of the passing of time and the action of nature. Such monu-
ments, however, do not induce the same feeling as a well-maintained monument of lesser age. The
latter, due to its richness of details, gives us a greater possibility to participate, through the observa-
tion of the traces of the old, in the desired state of being (Riegl, Progetto, 231).
41. Riegl, Progetto, 226 (emphasis mine).
42. Ibid., 224.
43. Ibid., 23132.
44. Riegl, The Modern Cult of Monuments, 24.
45. J. A. Tainter and G. J. Lucas, Epistemology of the Signicance Concept, American Antiquity 48, no. 4
(October 1983): 712.
46. K. I. Grandison, Challenging Formalism: The Implications of Contemporary Cultural Theory for His-
toric Preservation, Landscape Journal 18, no. 1 (spring 1999): 3040; and Tainter and Lucas, Episte-
mology of the Signicance Concept, 70719.
47. Riegl, Progetto, 212.
48. Zerner, Alois Riegl, 181; Bogner, Empirisme et speculation, 51.
49. Riegl, Progetto, 231 (emphasis mine).
50. Herbarts theory of pure visibility proposed a radical formalism based on the proportions and rela-
tions within a work. Formalism applies not only to the work of art but to the forms under which
they are observed (E. Mundt, Three Aspects of German Aesthetic Theory, The Journal of Aesthetics
and Art Criticism 17, no. 3 [March 1959]: 29091). The connection between Riegl and Herbart was
suggested to me by Erika Najinski.
51. Bogner, Empirisme et speculation, 4849.
52. C. Woods, Introduction, in The Vienna School Reader: Politics and Historical Method in the 1930s (New
York: Zone Book, 2000), 28.
53. The separation of form and content, or meaning, dates to Kant; his ideas were taken up during the
nineteenth century by scholars in history and psychology who developed systems based on concep-
tual, formal, or sensual criteria (Mundt,Three Aspects of German Aesthetic Theory).
54. Sola-Morales, Toward a Modern Museum, 73.
55. Mundt, Three Aspects of German Aesthetic Theory, 3035.
56. Riegl, Progetto, 235.
57. Ibid., 210 (emphasis mine).
58. Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity, 66.
59. Geza Hajos, Changes in the Idea of Monument: Problems in the Care of Buildings in Austria, Acta
historiae artium 32, nos. 14 (1986): 123.
60. Riegl, Progetto, 216 (emphasis mine).
61. Ibid., 211 (emphasis mine).
62. Cited in Colquhoun, Newness and Age Value, 214 (emphasis is Colquhouns).
63. Colquhoun, Newness and Age Value, 214. David Lowenthal traces this phenomenon to its roots in
the eighteenth century, when Europeans began to conceive the past as a different realm, not just
another country but a congeries of foreign lands endowed with unique histories and personalities.
This new past gradually ceased to provide comparative lessons, but came to be cherished as a heritage
that validated and exalted the present (The Past Is a Foreign Country, xvi).
64. Scarrocchia, Il Progetto di Riforma, 55; Hajos, Changes in the Idea of Monument, 123. Decades
later, following the 1982 publication of The Modern Cult of Monuments, Riegls work was discov-
ered by the burgeoning heritage eld in the United States. The essay clearly inuenced the new
approach of values-based preservation, although the precise mechanisms of this inuence have yet
to be studied.
65. The rst volume of the inventory was published in 1907, and four years later, the rst binding
preservation legislation was adopted. The current legislation, still based on Riegls and Dvoraks

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 work, dates from 1923 (J. Jokilehto, A History of Architectural Conservation [Oxford: Butterworth-
Heinemann, 1999], 16364, 219; Hajos, Changes in the Idea of Monument, 123).
66. Blower describes Austrian policy and activities in Split in The Monument Question, chapter three;
the following is based on his account. He has also translated Riegls report into English: Report on
an Investigation Concerning the Defence of the Interests of the Medieval and Modern Monuments
within the Former Palace of Diocletian at Split, Undertaken on Behalf of the Presidency of the Royal
and Imperial Central Commission, in Diocletians Palace in Split in the Monographs of George Niemann
and Ernest Hebrard, printed conference program (Split: Institute of Art History, 2012), 4656. This
report will be cited below as Report on Diocletians Palace at Split.
67. William Kubitschek, Riegls coeditor, advocated the most extreme action: the removal and resettle-
ment of the population of the town center (Blower, The Monument Question, 116).
68. Riegl, Report on Diocletians Palace at Split, 56.
69. Ibid., 52.
70. Riegls statement, notes Blower, represents the rst application of Sittesque urban aesthetics to
the preservation of Diocletians palace; a privileging of picturesque historical agglomerations over
monumental vistas (The Monument Question, 119). On attitudes toward disencumbering, see
especially B. Ladd, Urban Planning and Civic Order (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990),
Chap. 4.

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