Dr Anthony Pace, archaeologist and a former Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, writes:

Many have encountered David Lowenthal first, as students, through his classic The Past is a Foreign Country (1985 and the revisited edition of 2015). My second encounter with David was at a pan-European meeting of the Council of Europe in 1994. The opening of the Berlin wall, in 1989, and its subsequent demolition resonated throughout the conference. The political climate across Europe was tense. The breakup of Yugoslavia had now entered complex military conflicts. Ethnic cleansing, once thought to be safely dead at the end of World War II, now reappeared.

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I spent much time at the conference with David travelling from Vienna, through Bratislava and on to Budapest and Ljubljana. Everywhere, the conference participants encountered colleagues who were eager to take part in a shared past, a common place, a common European home. The past, though foreign, held valuable lessons for East and West. David and I marvelled at the extent to which the past was conjured up as a collective phenomenon that could unit us across contemporary divides. At the conference the recent past was momentarily eclipsed by a distant Bronze Age.

David’s keynote speech guided the Council of Europe conference through the human urge to engage with the past. In his inimitable style, he explained how we adopt the past, monumentalise it, how we create collections, build museums, take care of ancient places. We also misunderstand the past, confusing history with memory and nostalgia. Sometimes we clean the past, choosing to forget and conjure up stories which are far removed from historical facts. The past often becomes an arena of contestation and conflict, rather than a source for understanding origins and those millennial steps, mistakes and successes that made us who we are. Evidence and truth, however inconvenient, are always stronger than relativism.

Often, the past is troublesome and awkward: we replace beautiful things, old documents, buildings and places with what we think are sound alternatives. In our eagerness to make places, for instance, we forget those social and cultural aesthetics inherited from the past. We forget that we need human spaces in which cultural can thrive. Modern becomes very ugly. The word itself is sometimes best suited to describe degradation and a new form of social poverty. Some of us mistake the term ‘modern’ for modernity, forgetting that the past has resonance that shapes our everyday identity, sense of place and our journeys into the future.

David’s passing in September reminded many of us of how relevant these critical issues are. As the past master of heritage philosophy, Prof. Lowenthal mentored whole generations of archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, geographers, architects and planners. His perspectives on heritage are outstanding contributions to the modern humanities.

An American who divided his time between London and the US, Prof. Lowenthal built a career on interdisciplinary experiences after graduating from Lincoln School (New York), Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In London David spent a good 40 years during which he also lectured at the University of London where he was Professor in the Department of Geography. Apart from The Past is a Foreign Country, his other major companion contributions are The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996) and George Perkins Marsh: versatile Vermonter (1958, revised 2003).

Ever the accessible scholar, David Lowenthal was also well-known through his advisory work at Unesco, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), ICCROM, the Getty Conservation Institute, the World Monuments Fund, the Council of Europe and Europa Nostra.  

David was also passionate about islands and islanders. He greatly admired Malta. During his visits here, he always remarked on how the Maltese Islands are among the most successful in the world. Never passing judgement, he knew Malta’s island syndrome through experience gathered in the Caribbean, the UK and the Mediterranean. He admired the fact that in our own ways, we journeyed through our rivalries and abroad, overcoming geographic limitations, to take our place among nations. David respected and admired the vast endowment that we have inherited from our past: our unique language, an outstanding cultural heritage that is world-renowned, and our survival instincts to move into the future. But would we visit our own foreign past with the same zeal of our visits abroad, only to come back, recount stories and lament what a wonderful place ours could be?