Art and environment as media for ecosustainability, ethics and aesthetics

“Art, both in a strict sense, but also in a broader sense, that is to say environmental and cultural heritage – considering, as it correctly should be, the environment with its individual compartments of air, soil and water – is indissolubly linked to the history of man”. It can be said, consequently, that the various artistic expressions and different generational periods, in the course of the numerous social happenings and problems which have occurred over the years up to the present day, are temporally connected to each other, because “the past is part of our future and our future is founded on our past”. This reality is pragmatically the basis for the activities of education and research in which I am engaged at the Department of Cultural Heritage at the Alma Studiorum University of Bologna. In fact, in dealing with problems related to the protection and valorization of cultural and environmental heritage through the use of diagnostic-analytical technologies, the experiences and historical-technical case histories of the artefacts examined, that is to say their “past”, cannot not be regarded and evaluated when projecting their study and conservation into the “future”. The content of the present paper is based on these initial considerations, also in relation to the correct and comprehensive education of young people in the field of the protection and valorization of cultural and environmental heritage.