The Rescuers: The Remarkable People Who Saved World Heritage

This book profiles some of the handful of people who rescued significant cultural treasures that would or may have been otherwise lost to humankind. Some, like Dr. Assad, were on a noble mission, but that is not always the case. Some are motivated by profit, fame, gratitude, or personal advancement. The act of rescue may not be straightforward: even the most heroic ones can be tainted, suspect, illegal, or ethically equivocal.

The ten stories in The Rescuers include a variety of objects, motivations, locations and historic periods. They include a Scottish prehistoric site; Soviet-era seed banking; mid-20th century photographic masterworks; African American and immigrant folk music; Alaskan Native ceremonial and cultural objects; and a German language, Czech author whose manuscripts now reside in an Israeli archive.

While each is a unique story, it is also representative of similar cases. Chapters explore some of the most controversial issues facing society today: appropriation, repatriation, indigenous rights, copyright law, racism, and the impact of tourism on fragile cultural sites.

What does the act of rescue mean? What is the psychology of those who commit these acts? Should the imperatives of society trump the rights of individuals to control their own legacy? Is more ethical for a museum to preserve cultural treasures or to return them to a tribe that might destroy them? What are the trade offs between economic development and historic preservation? These are the conundrums of today, the challenges of the future.

The stories included cover:
The Monuments Officers’ recovery of cultural treasures stolen by NazisThe saving of Skara Brae in Scotland by the Laird of BrecknessThe rescue of the Iraqi Jewish Archive by Harold Rhode and Doris HamburgTom Cade’s preservation of Peregrine falconsLouis Shotridge and George B. Gordon’s saving of Alaska’s Tlingit cultureThe preservation of American folk songs by John Lomax

The Rescuers is the latest addition to Nancy Moses’s series of books about iconic cultural treasures and the provocative issues they raise. The others are Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds, (Rowman & Littlefield 2020), Stolen, Smuggled Sold: On the Hunt for Cultural Treasures (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), and Lost in the Museum: Buried Treasures and the Stories They Tell (AltaMira Press, 2008), which won a Gold Medal from Forward Magazine. She created Philadelphia Business Journal’s ＂Power Lunch＂ column and a television series about game-changing Philadelphia women.

Moses has had an eclectic career in and around the nonprofit sector. She served as executive director of the Atwater Kent, Philadelphia History Museum. Her career includes senior positions at the National Endowment for the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania’s Fels School of Government, City of Philadelphia, and WQED-Pittsburgh Public Broadcasting. Her communications and planning firms served international, national, and regional cultural, educational, and community development nonprofits.

Moses holds a master’s degree from George Washington University and was a Visiting Scholar at the American University of Rome. She serves as Chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the government agency that supports and oversees museums, historic sites, historic preservation, and archives.