Frank Matero is as jumpy as a third-grader waiting for summer vacation to begin. Only he isn't going on vacation. The director of the University's Architectural Conservation Laboratory will be spending his summer crisscrossing the globe with his students in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation , a program unique in scope, tenor and creativity.

"Basically, we look at the role of conservation in the preservation of traditional communities and the role of technology in them," Matero, an associate professor of architecture, explained. His travels will take him to an isolated mountain village in Nepal, a Neolithic archaeological camp in Turkey, a palatial estate in the Czech Republic, a synagogue in Krakow, and a Native American rock-art site in New Mexico.

Penn's architectural conservation program differs from others in that it does not merely rebuild or refurbish crumbling structures, but tries to put them in their cultural context, according to Matero. He uses the project in Nepal as an example. There, he and a group of graduate students will work on the conservation of two 16th-century Buddhist temples in Lo Manthang, which is culturally part of Tibet, but politically part of Nepal.

"The temples are earthen structures, with some of the finest examples of ancient monastic art in the world," Matero said. "Fortunately, because they were in Nepal, they escaped the Chinese destruction of Tibetan culture in the 1950s and 1960s.

"But the monastic community left," he continued. "They usually lived in these temples and maintained them. When that change happened, the temples started to go into rack and ruin, and now they are getting to the point of being dangerous."

Before Matero can bring his modern restoration methods to an isolated community like the one in Nepal, he first has to take into account the traditions of the local residents and the sacredness of the buildings. To that end, part of the funds from the Getty Grant Program for this project will go toward paying Nepalese monks to help in religious and community matters.

"I never had monks in my budget before," Matero noted.

No monks will be involved in the Czech and Turkish projects. The Architectural Conservation Laboratory's work in those developing nations, made possible by grants from the World Monuments Fund and the Kress Foundation, will help the tourist trade of the former Iron Curtain countries.

In the Czech Republic, a group of graduate students will be looking at what can be done to conserve the Valtice Estate, a huge palace and grounds that Matero likened to Versailles. If all goes well, Valtice could become a major tourist destination in the future.

A more-delicate and long-term project is the one at Catalhöyük , the earliest known Neolithic city, the oldest parts of which date back thousands of years.

"Cultural tourism is booming around the world," Matero said. "When you go to Latin America and Turkey, they are spending tons of money on it. It's seen as a resource like oil or minerals. So the Turkish government has wisely reactivated this site in south central Turkey. It is really the first known settlement, the first known domestication, the first known monumental art. Our job is to do nothing less than stabilize and move 8,000 years of architecture built on top of one another, all made of earth. This won't be done overnight. It is a 25-year project."

The Graduate Program in Historic Preservation, of which Matero is the incoming chairman, is a two-year program with 20 to 25 students admitted each year. Matero believes that it is all the more valuable because the degree is bestowed by the School of Arts and Sciences, but the program is based in the Graduate School of Fine Arts--"an academic program in a professional school," he said.

As is apparent, students get a lot of hands-on experience. "You see, being in a university, the laboratory is both a physical place and a conceptual entity," Matero said. "It is the place where students, faculty and researchers can come together to apply the knowledge of the University through training in the real world. But we are in a professional school. We can't afford to just sit around and think great thoughts. We have to apply them to the real world."

And "the real world" isn't always some remote location. Through the Fairmount Park Preservation Trust, for instance, the laboratory just finished a research project on the 18th-century ceiling at the park's Belmont Mansion.

Not only buildings from the far-distant past benefit from the laboratory. The National Park Service used the expertise of Matero and his students to look at ways of preserving the stone at the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy gave them funding to see how, and if, some of Wright's homes should be repaired.

What excites Matero more than rebuilding structures is fitting them into their historical and traditional contexts. He is especially excited about the work going on this summer in El Morro National Monument in New Mexico.

"Conservation is a modern notion," he said. "Today you see ephemeral roadside architecture being preserved; World's Fair structures saved that were never meant to be permanent. When you go into traditional communities, like the Native American one in the Southwest, you still have to abide by their wishes when you go about preserving things."

Such is the problem with the rock art in El Morro. The religious beliefs of the Native Americans there say that the petroglyphs should be allowed to deteriorate with nature. But the land is now owned by the National Park Service, which wants to preserve not only the ancient petroglyphs, but the inscriptions put on the rocks by the Spanish explorers and American pioneers who traveled through the area in recent centuries.

"So far, the negotiations have been going well," Matero said. "This is not just engineering. We have to conjoin technology, philosophy and practice. There may be other good programs in historic preservation, but none of them are doing all of this."

Return to Compass Features for June 18, 1996