DO NOT TOUCH — Did we decide History was over?

Flash, flash, camera, flash! Wait, is it… Kim Kardashian? Wearing a Marylin Monroe dress? How dare she? Destroy a piece of history like that? Who does she think she is? 

I must admit, the outrage caught me off-guard. When did we decide that history was done? That things should all become symbols, kept in dark temperature-controlled rooms, not to be touched by anything or anyone? The definition of what a historical artefact is is broadening by the day. A dress, a chair, a toothbrush - nothing is safe. Or rather, everything should be. Meanwhile, we are desperate to experience authentic culture - or what we think that might be: four-hundred-year-old recipes and colourful period costumes. We want history to be alive enough to make us feel something, but never quite alive enough to change.

In 2014, the Victoria and Albert museum in London exhibited a pair of fake eyelashes commercialised by Katy Perry. Fake lashes. Why, of course, future generations deserve to know how we achieved that volume! According to UNESCO, the number of museums worldwide rose from around 22,000 in 1975 to 104,000 in 2021. That’s nearly five times as many— talk about our expanding appetite for preservation. I love museums;I will happily spend an afternoon reading labels. Still, must everything get one? At what point does an ordinary object become something we owe posterity—and who decided posterity wanted our false eyelashes? Put them in a well-lit display case, give them an accession number, and suddenly throwing them away sounds like a crime against culture. 

Then there is the growing demand for authenticity. For real tradition. It’s all over your For You Page: authentic Italian cooking classes, with an authentic nonna, teaching authentic recipes. Now that is a lot of authenticity.  Airbnb has caught on: book a family tradition, from 14h15 to 16h45. Or would you prefer the morning slot? But what are we actually buying - great recipes? We have those online. Intimacy? Getting warmer. A glimpse into a world of craftsmanship? Inherited secrets? Of a time when things were supposedly made better? Yes please! Do you take Amex? 

And why not? Why wouldn’t we try to go back to the roots? Why wouldn’t we put everything in museums, where they will be safe? Safe from light, from moisture, from dirty hands, from evolution. There. There is the danger: expecting traditions to remain still as decades pass by. Culture is shaped and reshaped by the people who live it. Yet in our eagerness to protect it, we insist that it conform to our preferred version of the past. Apparently, every generation was allowed to change it until ours. 

Take Liverpool. A city recognised by UNESCO for its pioneering docks and transport systems, stripped of its World Heritage status in 2021 after new developments were judged to ‘undermine its historic character’. Wait. Innovation helped make it worth preserving, but further transformation went too far? Who are we to decide when a landscape is finished? Liverpool is not the only example; everywhere you look, historical centers are protected, the inhabitants needing approval to paint their shutters or place a doormat. Of course a new waterfront development or an orange door isn’t necessarily progress in and of itself, but where do we draw the line? At what point does protecting a city’s history turn into preventing it from making any?

Let’s get some perspective. In 1506, Pope Julius II began building a new St Peter’s Basilica to replace the one that had stood there for over a thousand years. Imagine proposing that today. Rome had also been taking stones from the Colosseum for other buildings, including earlier work on St Peter’s. People needed materials, and there they were. Of course, we can regret what was lost. But we cannot admire everything they built while also insisting that they should have left everything alone. Rome became the city we love because people kept building it.

Some monuments and landscapes certainly deserve protection. The question is which ones, and what we expect that protection to do. I, for one, don’t think “select all” is much of an answer. Nor do I think keeping Marilyn Monroe’s dress safe from sweat stains fulfills our responsibility to future generations. Surely, we owe them something of our own!

Take the Sagrada Família. Construction began in 1882; Gaudí took over in 1883 and died in 1926, leaving others to carry the project forward. What passed from one generation to the next was a building still taking shape, with work left to do and decisions still to be made. There is something generous in that: trusting people you will never meet to carry out what you started.

Malraux wrote, “L’héritage ne se transmet pas, il se conquiert.” (Heritage isn’t transmitted, it is conquered). Heritage has to be actively made our own. That means protecting what matters, but also allowing people to adapt the places they inhabit and contribute something new. The people who live there should have a say. “Because it’s heritage” cannot be the end of every conversation.

And we are still capable of creating things worth handing down. Look at Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI in Rome. Even there, surrounded by centuries of architecture, there was still room to build something nobody had seen before.

We don’t have to love every new building. What we do have to do is leave room for the possibility that something might be built in our lifetime that will outlive us. Let our children have something of ours to argue about. Something they can love, hate, alter, or campaign to save. 

History is still happening. We might as well contribute.