The Conservation of the “Modern”: Franco Albini and the Museum of the Treasury of San Lorenzo in Genoa

This paper looks at the logic and significance of the recent work of conservation and restoration carried out by the authors at the Museum of the Treasury of the Cathedral of San Lorenzo in Genoa, which was designed and built by Franco Albini in the years 1953-56. More than fifty years after the completion of the structure various problems had emerged regarding the fixtures and fittings, the works exhibited and the exhibition layout itself, most of them due to wear and tear, leakages through the roof and the very methods/means used in the presentation of material. The intervention of conservation, maintenance, repair and - in few parts - modification, represented an occasion to look at the clashes – sometimes, the outright contradictions – that arose between the notions of ‘origin’ and ‘originality’, ‘authentic’ and ‘authorial, ‘modern’ and ‘contemporary’, which underlie all reflection upon restoration, especially those concerning Modern Architecture.