ABSTRACT
Marion’s question raises important issues. It also foregrounds others relating to our own account. As an active intervention in the biographies of valued “old things”, conservation confronts, and attempts to resolve, a range of dilemmas. A sense of jeopardy is keenly felt by all involved, framed by a moral weight of responsibility for the futures that conservation creates. Returning to Marion’s question and Glasgow Cathedral, nobody mentioned its relationships to empire and slavery during our research. No one was pre-occupied with the imperial connections of prominent individuals memorialised within it. No one voiced questions about where the money came from that was invested in the Cathedral as an important civic and national monument at the heart of the Church of Scotland.
