Carlo Ginzburg will speak at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Cultures of Conservation Seminar on Tuesday, April 19, at 6 pm. His talk is entitled “Lichtenberg’s Knife: A Few Reflections on Conservation.”

Undoubtedly, there are divergences—both practical and theoretical—among different cultures of conservation: the plural is indeed appropriate. All of those cultures, however, imply the materiality of the objects they take care of. But if we look at this issue from a distance, a long, complex historical trajectory will emerge. Its implications are at the center of our experience of living in today’s world.

Carlo Ginzburg has taught at the University of Bologna, the University of California Los Angeles, and at the Scuola Normale of Pisa. His books, translated into more than twenty languages, include The Night Battles; The Cheese and the Worms; Clues, Myths, and the Historical Method; The Enigma of Piero della Francesca; History, Rhetoric, and Proof; The Judge and the Historian; Wooden Eyes; No Island Is an Island; Threads and Traces; and Fear Reverence Terror: Five Essays in Political Iconography; Nondimanco, Machiavelli, Pascal. He is the recipient of the Aby Warburg Prize (1992), the Humboldt-Forschungs Prize (2007), and the Balzan Prize for the History of Europe, 1400–1700 (2010).