Episode 7: Bénédicte de Montlaur
“You can rewrite history by destroying monuments. Our built heritage plays a big part in the way we see our identity and our history. And that's why during conflict, people are targeting it.”
Bénédicte de Montlaur
Preserving Splendid Sites
In a world marked by volatility, Bénédicte de Montlaur oversees projects that grapple with the profound effects of war, climate change, urbanization, and the fading traditions of artisanship.
Bénédicte is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the World Monuments Fund, an organization dedicated to preserving our world's treasured sites. Her job: To urgently address and tackle challenges that threaten our cultural heritage. She says: "The problem today is that things are disappearing very quickly. We have to recount the stories of these places so that people realize the importance of heritage." A former senior diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bénédicte is a polyglot who speaks French, English, Arabic and Spanish. In 2015, she bridged into the world of culture when she became the Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy in the United States. Her focus has remained on facilitating mutual understanding between people and strengthening communities that refused to let their legacies fade away.
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Transcript
(Edited slightly for clarity)
Melissa Ceria: Bénédicte de Montlaur, welcome.
Bénédicte de Montlaur: Thank you for having me.
Melissa Ceria: You were born and educated in France. In your early years, how did you develop your deep appreciation for other cultures?
Bénédicte de Montlaur: Well, I always wanted to travel. I started learning Spanish and English at school, and that gave me the appetite to continue. And what really happened is, when I was in my 20s, I met an amazing Arabic teacher who took me to Cairo, and I fell in love with the architecture and the language. And I spent time there as well as in Yemen. And then I became a diplomat because I had to do something with all this Arabic language that I started learning at that time.
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Melissa Ceria [00:01:42] You served as an international diplomat for many years. What has been the most useful about that experience in your current role?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:01:49] Well, I think the most useful thing is the understanding that we all think differently. We have different references, and being immersed in different culture really helped me realize that on a daily basis. What has been very useful has been my experience at the United Nations. I was a negotiator at the Security Council. And when you start doing that at the beginning, you're really worried, You're like, Oh my God, how am I going to find common ground with like people have very, very different views of the world? And you realize that at the end of the day, if you really listen, that we seem to disagree, but very often we are not talking about the same thing and that you can find common ground. So that experience of negotiating at an international level has been extremely useful. I was also very lucky to have many different roles, and my last role in the French diplomatic corpse was at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S., and there I really got acquainted with philanthropy in the U.S. I had to run two foundations and to do fundraising, and to create cultural projects with many American partners. So all of this experience has been very useful for my current role. I feel in a way that French diplomacy, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as trained me, you know, helped me with languages, given me all this international exposure, negotiation skills, management skills and all of them are so useful today at The World Monuments Fund.
Melissa Ceria [00:03:27] As the CEO of The World Monuments Fund, you spend a lot of time thinking about the causes and effects of loss in our culture. Let's talk about some of the causes that are top of mind for you, starting with the impact of conflict and crisis. How do you select which monuments to focus on in these critical times?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:03:45] There are immense needs all around the world. We receive, like countless requests every day, of people who want to safeguard their irreplaceable heritage, and so we have to choose. So we are trying to choose projects that will allow us to develop innovative approaches, to experiment, so that the lessons learned, that will always be very local because we adapt our work at each site, but will also inspire other heritage management and will be sometimes replicated or at least inform what can be done at other sites. So there is this question of a ripple effect. So what we've done is to identify the main threats to heritage today, what causes loss and how to address it. So those main threats are number one, conflict. And this has been increasingly true. Heritage is not anymore just a collateral victim of war and conflict but is directly targeted. But also climate change has a huge impact on cultural heritage. And this needs to be measured and we need to find solution to mitigate this impact. Just think about sea level rise. A lot, a lot of heritage sites are on the coast because this is where humans lived. And then you have issues like urbanization and tourism, but also the mere fact that some skills are disappearing and those skills are necessary to preserve heritage. So we've identified those main threats to heritage and we are developing projects to address them.
Melissa Ceria [00:05:27] You have done a lot of work around the Mosul Cultural Museum in Iraq. Can you tell us a bit about that project?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:05:33] It's an incredible project because it's a very symbolic project. The Mosul Cultural Museum was taken by ISIS or Daesh, if you remember, where they broke statues. And really, they wanted to put that out there as a symbol of their lack of respect for pre-Islamic cultures. And so ISIS broke the statues in front of cameras and then broadcasted those images all around the world. And that was a giant shock. And people realize how much they care about heritage, even though may not seem your heritage, it's heritage from Iraq. But the truth is that it's humanity's heritage. ISIS, at the same time, you know, bombed the building and put a fire to the library. So two years ago, we started working with the Louvre, and the Smithsonian, and the foundation called ALIPH to restore the museum as a symbol of hope for the city of Mosul. It's quite extraordinary to see everything they've lost in Mosul. So ISIS left, I mean, was kicked out really, only six years ago. And at that time the city was in ruins. And it's extraordinary to see that today, six years later, people are back, shops are reopening, we are organizing concerts at the Mosul Museum, and there is hope. And this was in large part due to the launch of major heritage projects by UNESCO, and by World Monuments Fund, and other organizations. Because our projects give, you know, a common purpose to people, give them an income for some and inspiration for all of them, they can rally around those places that represent their identity and their history and recreate activity around them. So it's a very important project symbolically for Iraq and for World Monuments Fund and all our partners.
Melissa Ceria [00:07:37] And you mentioned earlier, to demolish a cultural site is to wish to eradicate history. From what you've seen, Bénédicte, how does this kind of destruction impact the identity and the sense of belonging of the affected communities?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:07:51] It's a very direct way to attack the identity of people. We've seen it in many places. We've seen it in Mali, we've seen it in Syria as the destruction of Palmyra. You know, terrorists choose this heritage and destroy it to impact people because it is history. And we are seeing it in Ukraine as well. As you know, the war in Ukraine is very much about what is Ukraine? What is the history of Ukraine? Does Ukrainian identity exist or is it Russian? And of course, it's a mix of all of that. But you can rewrite history by destroying monuments, by recreating new monuments. So in fact, our built heritage plays a big part in the way we see our identity and our history, because it anchors those memories and this history. And that's why during conflict, people are targeting it.
Melissa Ceria [00:08:48] Undoubtedly, local communities must have strong views about how their cultural landmarks should be preserved and how they want to tell their story after loss. How do you invite them into that process?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:09:00] Well, so first of all, none of our projects are decided from New York, where we have our headquarters. Our process of selection is very, very much bottom up. We receive nominations of sites from local partners all around the world through a program that's called the Watch. And so sites can be nominated by a community, by a nonprofit, by a local academic, engineer, or by a government. So that's the first way in which we invite people to join our work is that they can nominate their site. Secondly, when we decide to develop a project, it's a partenerial approach. So we go there, some staff of World Monuments Fund, our experts go there, identify what is the issue, what the community really wants, what do they want to achieve and what are the resources on the ground. So the situation is extremely different from one continent to another, and from one place to another. And then we, we structure a team. Most of the time it's as local as possible, and we bring a punctual international expertise to carry on the project.
Melissa Ceria [00:10:13] What has been your personal response when you witness these sites that have been destroyed by acts of violence?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:10:20] Well, so it can be acts of violence. So it can also be act of God. Or mismanagement. So I think we all remember, and that's maybe the best example we all remember is a fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. This is, I think, the example of destruction of a heritage site that all of us remember where we were exactly when we saw the first image of it. I remember I was in Louisiana, in New Orleans, and I saw these images and I couldn't believe it. And I had this sense of sadness and of loss. And it's not only because I'm French, because at that time I was the French Cultural Counselor in the US, and we organized organ concerts in cathedrals all around the US, and thousands of people came because I think all of us felt this sense of loss, of this very important place for our identity and history. So, you know, I feel a lot of emotion because I think these places teach us something about what it means to be human. It's not the only thing like there are many other components. And very often it teaches us a lot about human creativity and the frontiers that humans keep pushing to create new things. And that's why I've been traveling all around the world to see what humans are capable of, which is quite unbelievable. And you're always surprised. So you don't want to see those examples of human genius disappear.
Melissa Ceria [00:11:53] And so what you're saying is that preservation really plays an important role in promoting intercultural understanding among people, even if it's not something that happens in your own culture. It does bring people together.
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:12:05] Yes, absolutely. It brings people together in several ways. First of all, it inspires respect. You know, when you discover amazing temples in Thailand, you would have never imagined that humanity could build that. And immediately you are very respectful for the craftsmen, the architects, the people who are behind those achievements. That's point number one. But also cultural heritage projects bring people together, various teams together in a very concrete manner. And that's another way to build mutual understanding, on a very small scale and sometimes on a very big scale. So for example, we work at Ani, which is a medieval city, a medieval Armenian city on the eastern border of Turkey. And then we have Armenian and Turkish teams working together, which is quite unprecedented. And it works because all of them care about the heritage. And they are able, as individuals, to transcend the deep seated animosity between those two communities. So there are many examples of that. You know, the Mosul bridge is an example. There is a site at the border of Cambodia and Thailand. So I feel, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with the history of the construction of the European Union, and how coal and steel was a great way to create, like a common project between European nations so that they wouldn't do war again. So I think in a way, heritage is the same. Like if you create projects that are very inspiring, you can bring people together and create mutual admiration and respect for one another.
Melissa Ceria [00:13:45] Climate change has also become a critical player in your line of work. Rising temperatures, higher water levels, extreme weather patterns. It all feels very volatile. Where have you chosen to focus your attention?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:13:59] Well, so we are optimistic people. So even though climate change is impacting sites all over the world, we are looking at where heritage can bring solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change. So, for example, it was really interesting to see in our last Watch process, nominations coming from different parts of the world, and nominations that were about what traditional water management systems. So we received nominations from India and from Peru, and from Nepal, of local communities who wanted to rehabilitate their traditional fountains, or stepwells for India, or reservoir up in the mountains in Peru. And the idea here is that not only those are incredible architectural structures, very, very beautiful, architecturally incredible, but they can also help mitigate in a way this water crisis by providing water to the community, sometime potable water, sometimes water for irrigation. Those are structures that have been imagined and built by our ancestors for thousands of years, and that more recently, I would say in the last century were out of use. And because of the modern systems, which of course are more efficient in certain sense, but at the same time, today we need other systems to face the water crisis that is prevalent and growing in so many places. So rehabilitating some of those traditional water management systems, it's about water harvesting. It's about making sure that we don't waste the water in India of the monsoon, for example, or in Peru of the glaciers melting. So there is a lot of waste at the moment. And those traditional systems help harvest this water. So that's one area. We are also working on historic gardens and their adaptation to climate change, as you know, like gardens and green spaces can play an important role in cities in particular. And finally, same thing out of the Watch, we had a site nominated in England that's called Hurst Castle, and it's a citadel built at the time of Henry VIII, in the south of England. And this place is collapsing into the water because of sea level rise. And it's not an isolated case, you know, it's going to happen in many, many places. So you have cities or regions, let's say New York or Venice, that we have the means maybe to build, you know, big barriers like the MOSE in Venice to fight sea level rise and to maintain the water at a level that is reasonable and that preserves the city. But frankly, that is extremely costly. And you won't be able to do that everywhere. So we are creating a network of sites impacted by sea level rise to explore together solutions. Sometimes they are like technical, like the one I've just mentioned, sometimes our nature based. For example, we've been working at a site called Kilwa Kisiwani in Tanzania, where in fact the site could be predicted by replanting mangroves in the water around the site. And that's very nature based, very local. So they are different solutions possible. The most important, at the end of the day, is to make sure to document and to study what is the function of this place for the community, how you capture its essence and its social role, so you can replicate it somewhere else, if necessary.
Melissa Ceria [00:17:48] Are you having to reconsider the way you work in response to the pace of these events?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:17:54] Well, you know, all of us, I think we have no idea of the pace and what's going to come, and we will have to adapt again and again. And frankly, heritage is also about that, like it's about the study of how humans have been adapting all the time and developing new techniques, etc.. So when you're talking about the pace, you know, it's very interesting, the MOSE, so this barrier put in place in Venice, it was supposed to be used like, you know, maybe a dozen times a year to face high tide. And I've heard that they are using it much more than what was initially the plan. And so the worry is that they've built this gigantic and very costly structure, but how long will that be efficient? Because it's going much faster than we thought.
Melissa Ceria [00:18:41] Another fascinating aspect of your work, and there are many, pertains to the preservation of specialist skills and traditional knowledge within the realm of conservation. Is it difficult for you to attract the skill set that you're looking for?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:18:56] What is a question is really to make sure that we maintain certain skills that are necessary for preserving historic buildings, and the most important ones. And of course, the challenge here is not only to train people, because you can always train people, but it's to make sure that then they find jobs, you know, because otherwise they are being trained and then they go do something else. So you want to be very responsible for that, and to train people for certain skills where you think there is a market, either in preservation or otherwise. So, you know, we have so many examples of crafts that have disappeared because there is just no one who knows how to perform them. So, for example, we are a project that I particularly like is a project around gold leaf production in Japan. So we realized, so the gold leaf production is a very important element of Kanazawa in Japan. And this is where you had all the specialists and it's very much used like, you know, for temples, but also sometimes in jewelry. And we realized that the specialists of this technique that is really about spreading the gold and creating sheets of gold, were most of them in the 70s. So we created a partnership with Tiffany Japan to train a new generation to this technique. You are not talking about big numbers. Like in that case, I think it's eight trainees. But already, if you have eight people who are younger who know how to do that, then they can transmit that knowledge. We had a little bit of a similar example in Myanmar, when we started working on a wooden temple, one of the last wooden and most amazing wooden temple in Myanmar. And then we needed to find the artists and the craftsmen who knew how to carve that wood, and we could train a whole new generation. So we did that, and I thought it was completely fascinating.
Melissa Ceria [00:20:56] Do you think there is an opportunity to introduce the history of artisanship at an earlier level in classrooms, so that young people can be more aware of that tradition in their own cultures?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:21:09] Yeah, I think it's really important. I know, like educators do the best and they try to do as much craft as possible starting by that, but also to bring kids to the museum and to expose them to the tradition. So I think the more we can do of that, and also those type of job need to be valorized, that's really important for young people to understand the value of it and the connection of those craft to their heritage and their identity, because of course, they are all fascinated by computers and tech, but at one point they will realize it's not incompatible, that there are other elements into culture that's important.
Melissa Ceria [00:21:49] Which countries do you think are doing a good job of supporting their local craftsmen?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:21:55] That's a very good question. I'm not going to give marks here, but from what I've seen, I would say that I think there are different levels of advancement and investment in heritage and craft. Also, what's interesting is places where you have some private, like for-profit companies that are investing in it. So for example, of course I'm very biased because I'm French, but in France you can see like everybody is convinced that heritage preservation is very important. And when I travel around the world, it's not necessarily the case. But in France, you know, they've made an industry out of it. It's like the number one touristic destination in the world, and that's very much around our heritage. So you have incredible government support for heritage. But you also have the fashion industry that more and more supports the craft. You are just talking now about the craft being taught at school. So for example, the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation has something called Le Prix pour l'Intelligence de la Main, or the intelligence of the hand. And they are giving prizes to designers who create amazing works. So that's one example. But you also have Chanel who has bought and resuscitated so many crafts in their industry, but still they are very interested by that. And you can see that some designers, for example, Sabyasachi in India, is really interested also by preserving the art of embroidery. So I think the focus of, I mean, the fashion industry has many problems, but their focus on excellence and skills is really good for crafts because it gives an appreciation to the craft. So I would say, yes, France has done a good job. I see a growing interest in other parts of the world like India, and lots of people are interested in it, but also in the UK they've been doing a lot. Like Europe, the idea of heritage preservation and craft preservation is more advanced in Europe, but now you're starting to see it in the Middle East. Very interesting to see everything that's happening in the Gulf. So, you know, you're seeing it emerge in many different places of the world.
Melissa Ceria [00:24:16] And in addition to the craft itself, what is the role of storytelling in promoting that?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:24:22] It's crucial because it's all about people, and you won't get people to support or people interested if you're just talking about the stone or the material, even though it's fascinating. But you need to talk about what happened at those places. The other day, I was at a presentation about the Bagatelle Garden and Building and Palace in Paris, and we didn't talk too much about the architecture, but we talked about the incredible and fascinating people who lived there one after another. And this is what inspires people to restore these places and to make sure that they remain relevant, whether they bring income or they are adapted for a new use. You can be very creative. Yesterday also, I was at a ceremony of the awards for awards of preservation for here in the US. It was incredible how people are transforming old banks into a hotel and a community center. But you could see the passion that this place creates and how historic places can really add another layer to people's life, much more than any new building could do.
Melissa Ceria [00:25:39] As you look ahead, Bénédicte, do you think that preserving these treasured sites will play an increasingly important role in helping cultures heal after loss?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:25:50] Yes, I think people realize the value, and once again, we are not talking only about World Heritage sites, like world famous sites. What we are talking about is about places that have significance for their local communities that they can rally around. So yes, I think I can see the young generation being, in fact, very interested in places that have special significance and that can help rally their community around something very concrete and that differentiate them. So absolutely, I think there is a great future for heritage preservation.
Melissa Ceria [00:26:29] Because when we restore or rebuild. What message are we sending to communities?
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:26:36] Well, we are we are saying that we care, because heritage is at the end of the day is not that much about the past is about the present. You know, it's about who we are today. How are we different? What is this community? Where does it come from, etc.? So instead of destroying places, that would mean, well, I don't really care about that place and I'm going to build a building that is like anywhere else in the world, where in fact I care about the specificity. And that will make you very special. And I think that's why we are touched by historic places and why they are meaningful to us.
Melissa Ceria [00:27:11] Bénédicte de Montlaur, I wish you all the best as you continue your work preserving these legacies around the world. Thank you for this conversation.
Bénédicte de Montlaur [00:27:18] Thank you so much, Melissa. It was a great pleasure.
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Website: World Monument Fund
Instagram: @worldmonumentsfund and @benedictedemontlaur