Barry Bergdoll to Take Part in an Event on Notre-Dame’s Restoration

Bergdoll discusses the restoration of Notre-Dame with Columbia News.

On March 12, 2025, Maison Francaise and the World Monuments Fund (WMF) will present the 2025 Paul Mellon Lecture, highlighting the monumental, five-year restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, France, after the cathedral’s devastating fire in April 2019. Philippe Villeneuve, chief architect of the restoration, will deliver the lecture. He will be joined by Barry Bergdoll, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History and Archaeology; landscape architect Bas Smets, who won the 2021 international design competition to reimagine Notre-Dame’s surroundings; Patrick Malloy, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where the 6 p.m. event will take place; and Bénédicte de Montlaur, president and CEO of WMF.

March 06, 2025
Notre-Dame interior, Paris. Photo by Franck Legros.

What was your part in the Notre-Dame restoration project?

I did not contribute personally. My only participation was being one of the millions of people around the world saddened on the day before my own birthday in April 2019 to see one of the masterpieces of architectural history in flames in my beloved city of Paris. Subsequently, I signed petitions against President Macron’s desire to replace the lost 19th-century spire (from which the statuary had been saved a few days before the fire, when the sculptures were taken down for restoration work) with a new, 21st-century spire.

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