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The church today |
The Old St. Gabriel Church - its place in Iberville Parish history, goes back to the very beginning.
A historic building like the old St. Gabriel Church marks Iberville's place in Louisiana's landscape
as well as Louisiana and the Mississippi River Valley's place within the National landscape. It is that
significant a building, that old a building.
In the 1960's there was an international conference and what came out of that conference was the
Venice Charter.
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The church and churchyard |
What this group of conservators and preservationists [tried to do was to]
set out
guidelines for dealing with historic buildings.
One of the guidelines says that these buildings, these
historic objects, are to be treated as works of arts as much as they are to be treated as historical
objects. Works of art to me meaning that the authentic material and form helps to tell a story of
people and place, of culture, and so that is why it is important as a work of art. So we have to keep
that in mind when we talk about historic buildings, we are talking about works of art as well.
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