German Apsara Conservation Project

The German Apsara Conservation Project is a German project that conserves the carved and decorated surfaces of temples at Angkor and other sites in Cambodia. Its team comes from TH Köln, the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, and Germany's Federal Foreign Office supports its work.

Illustration inspired by conservation work in a carved gallery of Angkor Wat.

Organization details
Alternative names	GACP
Type	Arts and culture
Focus areas	Conservation of carved, stucco and painted surfaces at Angkor Wat and other Cambodian temples; training Cambodian conservators
Subjects	History & Remembrance; Visual Arts & Design
Country	Cambodia
Headquarters country	Germany
Cambodia operating location	Angkor
Founded	1995
Operating status	active

History

The project dates its start to 1995. In that year scientists and students linked to it began to study the temples of Angkor. They looked at the sandstone, brick and stucco used to build and decorate the temples and at the ways these materials weather. Its university page names the first aim as preserving the reliefs of Angkor Wat. ICC-Angkor, the international committee set up to coordinate the teams working at Angkor, also lists 1995 as the project's start in its 2014 report.

The project counts 1997 as the year it officially began its work at Angkor. In its account the training of Cambodian conservators began that year, two years after the research, and it describes itself as Germany's permanent contribution since 1997 to the international effort to safeguard Angkor under UNESCO. In 2022 deutschland.de, the Federal Foreign Office's portal, named the geoscientists Hans Leisen and his wife, Esther von Plehwe-Leisen, as the project's leaders. The project's report states that Germany's president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, visited it in 2022.

Work

In its own description, the project works on decoration in stone, stucco and brick, including painted ornament and the remains of wall paintings inside brick sanctuaries. ICC-Angkor's 2014 report gives its three aims as the scientific study of the Angkor Wat bas-reliefs and of the materials of other temples, conservation work with long-term maintenance and the training of Khmer conservators. The same report places its work at Angkor, Koh Ker and Phnom Kulen, and it puts the project's total budget at US$6 million.

Angkor Wat

At Angkor Wat the project gives high priority to scaling. In this kind of damage the weathered face of a relief hardens into a crust that slowly comes away from the stone behind it, and the carving on it is lost. The project's report covers work up to 2024. By then its team had finished three of the four corner towers on the temple's second level and was at work on the last, at the southeast corner. From 2022 it tested ways to keep monsoon rain from leaking through the roof and walls of the Historical Parade Gallery onto the bas-reliefs. In the project's account, a test area treated in 2024 stayed dry through a heavy rainstorm later that year, while untreated parts of the gallery let water in.

Roluos and other sites

The project states that it has worked on the temples of the Roluos group since 1999, above all on Preah Ko, and that it began a program to conserve their stucco decoration in 2011. Five brick towers at the Bakong were conserved first, and work on the decoration of Preah Ko began in 2023. Its university page also lists a study of the stucco of temples at Angkor and Sambor Prei Kuk from the 6th to 10th centuries and a program of emergency protection for reliefs at threatened temples in the Angkor park. The same page describes a plan to rejoin a broken linga on Phnom Bok, 4.5 meters long and about 23 tonnes in weight.

Training

The project counts the training of Cambodian conservators as one of its main tasks. Its figures differ by date and by what they count. ICC-Angkor's 2014 report gives 54 Cambodian conservators trained and a staff of 24 Cambodians, five international experts and 17 non-permanent international experts. In 2022 deutschland.de gave more than 150 Cambodians who had taken part since 1997. The project's later report gives more than 150 Cambodian and international students in its training program since 1997. Its undated university page gives 24 Khmer trained in the conservation and documentation of stone objects and 25 local conservators trained at Preah Ko.

The project states that most of the Cambodian conservators it trained have also joined the APSARA National Authority, with which it carries out its work. It also trains staff of the national authority for Preah Vihear and works with Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and UNESCO's office in Phnom Penh.

References