In 2001, the Taliban in Afghanistan dynamited two of three giant Bamiyan Valley Buddhas in Afghanistan. Since then, the Buddha remnants at Bamiyan (also spelled Bamyan and Bamian) were included on the 2008 World Monuments Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites by the World Monuments Fund. Many well-meaning organizations have taken an interest in the restoration of the monuments. Others, both inside and outside of Afghanistan, argue that to do so would be a double blasphemy, since any recreation would only “Disneyfy” the area and erase the evidence of distruction, which is now part of Afghanistan’s history.
Here is a conundrum: Is the destruction caused by time and weather of a different order and value than destruction caused by time, politics and war? And should a monument be restored to simulate its (imagined/documented) original condition? Within the world of restoration arts, there has long been an argument over how to best restore works of art while preserving both the evidence of its history (histories) and its original materials, degraded though they may be. There is no hard and fast border between what is original and what is interpretive. There is no hard and fast border between what is worthy of preservation and what is not. Must we decide what conditions or realities take precedence over others? Is preservation of art and cultural artifacts a valid goal? Perhaps it is better to remember or imagine the Buddhas as they were, rather than restore them in a form that in no way matches the condition of the already degraded originals.
If restoration is a form of remembrance and honor, then something must be done. Might the destroyed remnants of the Buddhas remain as they are, a horrific monument to the destructive power of human beings, but also be restored in the form of a Virtual Reality experience? 3D renderings have already been done of the Buddhas and the site. Why not take it to the next level? (Note: Learn about the beautiful and ornate artworks destroyed by the Taliban inside the many caves in the Bamiyan Valley, in addition to the Buddhas.)
bordertalksblog.com 
my first reaction when i heard about this cultural cleansing was wow, what big ones. then i thought that the Buddha would find this part of the transitoriness of this madness called civilization. it is painful if you are a culturallista to loose such ‘big ones’ but the tenets of buddhism is to ‘let go’. this letting go is liberating in that you, the target victim audience,
can scoff at the absurdity of violence by migrating elsewhere, spiritually. what got into those monks to do the impossible? can not replicate that ambition. i agree with the historian, move on.
but what of that ugly called ground zero? the band aid that empire demands is something bigger, better. and the result is a pathetic bunch of glass needles, soulless, rudder less,
dull and boring.
a korean artist visited my studio and saw a photo of the towers burning on my wall. she winced. i told her Rome was sacked by the Vandals and than sacked by everyone else. So this was a sacking by i do not know who. But this is not about ‘the exceptional moral strength of a nation state’ but more about the nature of humanity—cause and effect. back to Buddha.
Free Tibet that is something about the future, indeed.
I grew up in Chelsea, ten blocks south of Penn Station. That landmark’s destruction–and the threats to Carnegie Hall and Grand Central Station that followed–made me a preservationist for life. Just as Moses’s Lower Manhattan Expressway and one-term State Senator Waldaba Stewart’s Central Brooklyn Expressway made me a foe forever of the private car as America’s primary mode of transportation.
I believe preservation of old buildings and retention of the scale of long-established neighborhoods are about much more than real estate values and even more than history and architecture, important as those considerations are. They are also about reclaiming our right as city dwellers to occupy and use streets as complex social environments rather than have to perch on sidewalks that are just that–narrow walkways on either side of a much larger and clearly dominant roadway devoted to wheeled and usually motorized vehicles passing through.
That said, I loathe the Colonial Williamsburgh school of preservation with its bonneted milkmaids. I deplore the use of preservation values to dead-stop change and innovation–or to cleanse a neighborhood of poor and working-class people.
I agree with those who say that alteration, even destruction are parts of history and should be accounted for, if possible.
A case in point: Several years ago, my wife Ellen and I were restoring the original design of our house’s shingle siding. It was a fairly straightforward job: you simply replicated what you found under all the other layers of siding. Cut and stain, cut and stain.
One location, though, presented a quandary. The location was a sleeping porch tacked onto the master bedroom after the original construction, and its shingles were of a different design than the shingles on either side of it. The sleeping porch shingles were square-cut and plain. Those on the main part of the house are quite lively, recalling the movement of waves on the sea, possibly after the waterway at the bottom of the street.
Should we honor the history of the building, we wondered, as evidenced by the two very different styles of shingles, one next to the other? Or should we unify the porch and the house by using the same shingles on both?
We chose the second option, simply as an aesthetic matter. But I could have made a more preservation-conscious case in arguing for option #1.