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We
all treasure things that have special meaning for us.
Each of us has things that we
care a lot about.
Families,
communities, cities, and even nations value special things.
Some families pass on heirlooms.
People
in one community might prize a ceremonial mask.
A city
can be proud of its first fire engine.
In the
moist, tropical climate of Indonesia, this treasured sculpture
at a royal temple has survived for nearly 400 years.
After a
devastating fire in the 1990s, a great deal of money was spent
to restore Windsor Castle because it is a special building
in England.
In the
1960s construction of a new high dam on the Nile River would
have flooded this ancient Egyptian temple. People cared enough
about it to cut it apart like a huge stone puzzle and put
it together again on higher ground.
Among the
famous treasures in the United States are the Statue of Liberty,
the original Star Spangled Banner, and the Liberty Bell.
At the
end of the 20th Century, the White House Millenium Council
and Save Outdoor Sculpture, a project jointly sponsored by
the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property
and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution,
worked together to find and protect outdoor artworks that
have special meaning for Americans.
In the
year 2000, then first lady, Hillary Clinton visited Albuquerque,
New Mexico to declare Luis Jiménez' [Loo EES Him EHN
ez] sculpture, the Southwest Pieta, to be an officially designated
national historic treasure.
 
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