Conservation
Policy
At La Ruta Maya Foundation, we believe that Pre-Columbian art from the Maya area and Mesoamerica should receive the same consideration as the antiquities from other cultures in the World. The passage of time and the environmental conditions have caused damages that frequently affect the integrity of the object and its artistic quality.
The conservation of cultural property is of utmost importance for its preservation, since this allows an optimal appreciation of the works of art. For this reason, it is important to apply strategies to prevent deterioration.
La Ruta Maya Foundation has a protocol with intervention criteria established by a professional restorer and conservator of cultural property. The conservation process is determined based on the study and careful analysis of the physical condition of the piece, ensuring the minimum intervention, especially by implementing preventive conservation techniques (cleaning, environmental control and safety measures). In extreme cases of deterioration and alteration, consolidation and restoration are recommended.
The reintegration of missing parts is carried out only in those cases in which the object require stability, either of its parts or the materials that compose it. Adding and / or eliminating elements is strongly avoided, to prevent creating a false history.
The application of color is done only in the reintegrated area, as long as it does not involve the invention, recreation, or alteration of the artist's original design. This includes respecting elements such as character images and their natural or cosmological attributes; texts, glyphs, symbols or any other feature that could alter the historical and iconographic information that the piece could provide.
The intervention process is documented with photographs from beginning to end. These are included in the file of each piece, together with its IDAEH Cultural Property Registry file, its catalog entry, registration photographs, condition report, written and graphic research documents about the objects, and references to similar works of art and artifacts.
