Personality of the year: Bonnie Burnham, President of the World Monuments Fund

With throws ranging from country houses in Ireland to the Great Wall of China, the World testimonials Fund has been a pioneer in the conservation of historic sites since its foundations in novel York forty years ago. Louise Nicholson talks to its president--who is celebrating her twentieth year at WMF--about in what way she makes every dollar number in the charity s campaign to defend the world's threatened cultural heritage.

A bright-eyed and smiling torch-bearer, Bonnie Burnham leads the alone private, non-profit organisation devoted to onsite conservation of remembrancers and sites worldwide. President of the World memorials Fund since 1996, and Executive Director for eleven years before that, she works with a serious passion, holds a gruelling schedule and rarely takes time not on When we meet at her Madison Avenue headquarters, we sit in her no-frills office for sum of two units hours while she talks about WMF and her aims for it, totally focused, no phone call permitted to interrupt.

make straighted in a chic-but-sensible jacket and skirt, Miss Burnham personifies WMF's public image and ambition. placeed in 1965, its stated mission is 'the preservation of imperilled works of art and architecture worldwide [i]or[/i] part of to the other fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and training'. bring simply, there are no borders. Field casts range from the dome of the [i]cabaret[/i] des Invalides in Paris to the little-visited remembrancers of Champaner in western India, from Butrint Archaeological Site in Albania to the Great Wall of China. To date, WMF has helped to save more than 460 perilously endangered sites, in eighty-three countries.

The organisation's first hero was a retired American, Colonel James Gray. upon a visit to Italy he had the idea of stabilising Pisa Cathedral's famously leaning bell tower by dint of freezing the subsoil. The feasibility research for this became the inaugural cast of the International Fund for remembrancers (WMF's name until 1985), which Gray fixed in New York and then ran for almost sum of two units decades. From its inception, it was a channel for donors in the United States who were interested in preserving architectural heritage abroad.

The energetic colonel mov upon to the twelfth-century churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, winning capitals from Lila Acheson Wallace and then managing the spending of them. He was presently working with the travel promoter Lars Lindblad to save Easter Island's statues, and in 1966 went straight in after the devastating Venice freshets undermined the foundations of many buildings. The organisation helped awaken global touch for both sites, and continues to work upon them today--in Venice, the restoration of the Ca d'Oro's facade was the first of twenty-five throws there.

As the Venice cast grew, so WMF grew in stature and experience and station a clear pattern for its coming time work, especially in four areas. First, its field widened: Gokarna fane complex in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley was the first throw in Asia. Second, its administration fanned on the outside from New York: the succes of the Venice Committee l to other local committees being established; today there are WMF affiliates in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, together with worldwide partners. Third, muscular bonds were forged with major donors: support from the Samuel s Kress Foundation began in the 1970 for churches in Bologna and Spoleto, and continues today. Fourth, shut up partnerships were established with local preservation groups: an early individual was with the Irish Georgian Society for the restoration of Doneraile Court, Co Cork.

Peter severe president of the Hudson Valley manufacturing company Star Expansion and chairman of the Storm King Art Center began his lifelong support of and work for WMF more [i]or[/i] less thirty years ago. He calls the colonel 'a individual man army'. It was a hard act to tread in the steps of But when the colonel retired in 1984 and Bonnie Burnham arrived the following year to take upon his mantle, she won Stern's enduring think highly of 'She has so many talents', he says today. 'First of all she has the two a sound grasp of the technical side of maintenance--she is not just a theoretician--and she knows her art history. Secondly she has actual good taste and can prioritise a throw out to balance the artistic with the doability. She is hands-on and realistic, in like manner she can master the filled scope of a project, which is what we have to do all the time at WMF' Summing up her achievements in making the organisation a fortunate global player in the tough business of conservation today, he concludes: 'I've seen Bonnie become a real fine administrator and diplomat.'

Indeed, Miss Burnham was well prepared for the piece of work With two degrees in the history of art, she worked first for the International Council of Museums in Paris, where she became an adroit on the law of cultural attribute and then directed the International Foundation for Art Research. Today, twenty years after joining WMF she remains freshly enthusiastic and remarkably unfazed about the enormous scale of her mission. For there are not solely many thousands of fragile at the same time important sites around the world; an at any time larger number of them are threatened imminently through developers, war, natural disasters, pass over or uncontrolled tourism.