AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

Some of the most admired Indian court painters of all times worked for the Maharanas who ruled the princely state of Mewar from the majestic palaces of the city of Udaipur in Rajasthan between the 16th and the mid-20th centuries. The City Palace Museum in Udaipur (CPM) holds a rich collection of paintings on paper described as miniature in style but not in size, as they range from one to six feet in length. These were commissioned for the devotional practice of the elites, and also to portray the splendors of a highly cultural court life, as well as the activities that expanded beyond the walls of the palaces into the surrounding landscape, such as processions and hunting expeditions. Examples of these paintings exist also in the holdings of other museums and private collections. 

Few studies have been done to characterize the colorants and techniques employed in this workshop, and The CPM collection of Mewar paintings has not been subject to technical analysis yet. A recent collaborative project between The CPM and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (The Met) has brought for the first time the capability to perform Multiband Imaging (MBI) at The CPM and allowed the comparison of data among the two institutions. MBI for this project includes images obtained in the visible, infrared and ultraviolet regions of the electromagnetic spectrum with a full spectrum-modified digital camera. Information obtained with MBI was supplemented with XRF analysis. Lastly, observations made on painting practices, such as the setting of preparatory drawings or the use of admixtures of pigments to represent certain common elements, like bodies of water or vegetation, were also discussed with contemporary artists who continue to exercise miniature painting following the footsteps of their predecessors. Conservators from both museums describe together the methodology they employed to obtain images that rendered objectively comparable data and will share examples of some of the findings. 

Conservation is at its core the result of multidisciplinary expertise, and this case study truly illustrates the tremendous amount of collaboration that is necessary to accomplish technical imaging at this level. Conservators, curators, and officers from The CPM have worked closely with their peers at The Met. We have also benefited from the input of scientists, photographers and digital documentation specialists within the museum community and beyond. Specific discussions among these experts included best practices for color and tone calibration, workflows, light sources, filters and targets. The CPM is an international pioneer user of Met MCLED lights, a prototype multichannel LED lighting fixture designed at The Met with the intention to improve the quality and consistency of visible, ultraviolet and infrared radiation in a portable, affordable way. 

While MBI has become widespread practice in many parts of the world, it is still at an early phase of implementation among museum experts in India. This project has given colleagues in the Indian subcontinent the opportunity to reflect on the benefits and the challenges associated with this complex, ever-evolving method of looking at cultural heritage.

In 2023, a unique course in graduate conservation treatment was developed using an approach to the conservation of community heritage focused on meaning and collaborative work at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Titled Transferable Skills in Objects Conservation, this course was designed by Pamela Hatchfield, Judith Praska Distinguished Visiting Professor of Conservation and Technical Studies, in collaboration with Yue Ma, Director of Collections at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA), and private conservators from A.M. Art Conservation: Rachael Perkins Arenstein, Anne Léculier King, and Eugenie Milroy. Artifacts from MOCA’s collection with complicated condition issues and compelling histories were selected for treatment. Students explored a variety of skills increasingly central to current approaches to the conservation of objects, including storytelling, sustainability, and provenance research. Rather than focusing only on examination and treatment, we partnered with a local community museum, private conservators, and experts in fields including lifecycle analysis and journalism, embracing a holistic approach to the care of collections. The course also delved into treatment materials and techniques used in other specializations within conservation to highlight the composite nature of objects and the diverse range of materials and approaches that may be employed during treatment. 

Established in 1980, MOCA preserves and shares the diverse cultural experiences and material heritage of people of Chinese descent in the United States. MOCA’s collection was damaged by fire in 2020, an event of particular concern due to the museum’s role as a repository of community heritage. MOCA’s collection includes objects that are valued primarily for their significance to community members, sometimes placing less emphasis on their aesthetic and material qualities. Although intangible values are often considered during treatment, prioritizing cultural significance foregrounds the act of storytelling within the process of conserving objects. The students collaborated with MOCA staff to understand the contexts and histories of their objects, exploring archives and oral histories, developing treatments in consultation with Ma and A.M. Art Conservation, and navigating sustainability challenges. After receiving training in engaging and accessible storytelling, students shared treatment presentations geared toward different audiences: technical presentations for their conservation colleagues, general presentations for the broader community, and blog posts for MOCA’s use in publicity and outreach. We also shared our work through virtual group presentations with UCLA conservation graduate students. 

This holistic approach to the conservation of community heritage presents a model for the inclusion of reciprocal exchange of knowledge and resources with colleagues and those outside the field, and the importance of incorporating soft skills into our practice. This collaboration provided valuable treatment experience while presenting an opportunity to develop communication, storytelling, provenance, and sustainability skills. It enriched the learning experience for the students while making these objects accessible for the institution and the public. While students benefited throughout the consultation and treatment process, the tangible impact for MOCA will be visible when conserved objects are displayed when the renovated museum reopens in 2025.

In early November, 1938, thousands of Polish Jews living in Germany w ere expelled from the Reich. Denied entry into Poland, the exiles found themselves in a make-shift refugee camp near the border. Among them were the parents of seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, who was living illegally in Paris. Distraught at the precarious condition of his family, he sought revenge by appearing at the German Embassy and shooting the diplomat Ernst vom Rath. On November 9th at a meeting of the Nazi Party leadership in Munich, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels suggested that “World Jewry” was responsible for the assassination and announced that the Führer had decided that the “demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” Immediately after the speech, Party leaders instructed their local offices to avenge the murder of vam Rath by attacking Jewish owned businesses, homes, places of worship, and other institutions. The violence began later that evening. 

 

In the early hours of November 10th, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Police sent telegrams to the district headquarters and stations of the State Police and the Storm Troopers with specific directives for the riots including the engagement of Hitler Youth, the wearing of civilian clothes, and most importantly for our discussion, to remove and transfer all synagogue and Jewish community archives to the Nazi Security Service. The pogrom, now known as Kristallnacht or Night of the Broken Glass, was a well-planned attack designed to assert domination over the Jewish minority population through the destruction of the cultural and economic fabric of the community.

 

The state-sponsored activities of Kristallnacht served as a template for the continued attacks on the population and as the Nazi’s advanced across Europe. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has many examples of the damaged and fragmentary survivors of these campaigns. The collections contain a wide variety of objects and materials, so for clarity I will focus on a few that share the common characteristic of having come from synagogues that were vandalized and looted. They are also all displayed in the Permanent Exhibition which over the years, has necessitated a collaborative approach to their care and display across several museum departments. The Torah Ark from the synagogue in the small village of Nentershausen, Germany has hatch marks from an axe, primarily on the lintel of the painted wooden frame. It is placed in front of a case containing fragments of desecrated Torah scrolls gathered from different sites. In another area a heavily damaged stained-glass window that survived the burning of the Tempel Synagogue in Krakow is displayed. Each of these objects challenge the balance between conservation interventions and preserving the ability of the object to tell its story while ensuring appropriate display methodologies.

This year, the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) developed and piloted an in-school educational program for students in grades 6-12 in the Philadelphia school district titled “Art Conservation in the Classroom: Science, History, and Creativity”.  Through outreach visits to classrooms, and pre- and post-visit lesson plans that teachers can adapt to their curricula, this program introduces students to the fields of cultural heritage conservation and preservation, applies transferrable skills from these fields to other areas in their lives, and empowers them to care for the meaningful heirlooms in their families and communities. 

This program has arisen from the regular meeting of a CCAHA staff committee devoted to the development of K-12 educational programming.  This committee was formed in response to the goals of FAIC’s Held in Trust report about the need to build awareness among young people, particularly from BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, lower income, and disabled communities about the conservation field and the careers within it. In addition to making students aware of conservation as a possible career path, Art Conservation in the Classroom also aims to demonstrate how conservation links to other subjects such as chemistry, biology, art, and history.  By utilizing original artworks and historical documents from CCAHA’s study collection, the program also reinforces the importance of primary sources, what can be learned from physical examination of them, and the need to care for them for future generations.   

Recognizing the importance of co-creating these lessons with teachers who hold the expertise in their student’s needs, we kicked off the program with an Educator Open House designed to introduce educators to the kinds of things that we could do in their classrooms with the idea of sparking a conversation about how to adapt these ideas to their curricula. Following this, lesson plans will be developed in conjunction with a paid advisory committee composed of local teachers as well as education/writing consultant Lori Litchman, who is herself a former high school teacher.

In this presentation, CCAHA Education Program Manager, Greg Stuart, will share lessons learned from this program in the midst of its first year with an eye towards how you can implement K-12 programming at your own institution. 

 “Art Conservation in the Classroom: Science, History, and Creativity” is generously supported by the FAIC’s Holly Maxson Conservation Grant.

In 2023 the National Portrait Gallery in London (NPG) reopened to the public after undergoing the most extensive transformation of the building since the Gallery first opened its doors in 1896. The project, known as Inspiring People (IP), comprised a complete redisplay of the Collection, significant refurbishment of the building, the creation of new public spaces, a more welcoming visitor entrance and public forecourt, and a new learning centre.

One of the key aims of the building project was to enhance the visitor experience by the controlled re-introduction of daylight into spaces where windows had previously been blocked. At the same time, the new displays diversified the type of artworks on display, incorporating significant numbers works on paper and photography in the permanent galleries alongside paintings and sculpture. 

The engineering and design consultants Max Fordham were engaged to support the new vision for the Gallery. They created solar maps or ‘digital twins’ of the galleries simulating the natural light over a year using existing measured data as well as predicted future climate data. 

The modelling used a limiting illuminance (lux) and an annual exposure limit for artworks (klux.h per year) related to the light sensitivity of objects categorised as: 

2- Low responsivity (e.g. oil and tempera painting, wood, ivory) with a 200 lux limiting illuminance and 600 klux.h per year exposure limit, and 

3- Medium responsivity (e.g. prints and drawings, manuscripts, miniatures with a 50 lux limiting illuminance and 150 klux.h per year exposure limit). 

The use of annual exposure limits was new to the conservation team and required a shift in thinking as it did not align with the existing light sensitivity categories and exposure limits for objects at the NPG.

The digital twins allowed different methods of daylight control to be tested, including UV film, blinds, scrim and alternative settings for existing louvres. A range of different solutions were designed for different galleries, allowing curators to position category 2 light sensitive objects within the general gallery spaces. 

While modelling and planning was extensive, re-introducing and managing increased daylight across a range of differing display spaces is a complex undertaking requiring ongoing re-evaluation and adjustment. After opening, light monitors were placed into the galleries where category 2 objects were on display in spaces with natural light. Positioning of the sensors was a balancing act between aesthetic considerations for the re-displayed collection, and effective data gathering. With a year’s worth of data gathered since re-opening, these measurements can now be compared to the modelling by Max Fordham to assess the accuracy and review the parameters if necessary. 

This paper will discuss the challenges posed by the new approach to light management at the NPG and also the role of cross-team collaboration in the management and delivery of lighting projects.

Sustainability is proving to be a strong driver of new technologies, solutions and practices in museums. In this context sustainability is usually characterised as the saving of energy and consequent reduction in greenhouse emissions environmental sustainability. Some consideration is often given to resource use and reuse and to the financial consequences of changes made to improve sustainability.As conservators we are interested in the effect that such changes in technology or practice might have on the short- or long-term preservation of objects and on the balance between preservation of collections and their availability to visitors and researchers.In this presentation I will look at two ways in which museums have responded for the drive for greater environmental sustainability in the field of museum lighting.First, the exponential growth of lighting technologies that reduce energy consumption, principal among these being the massively increased use of LED lighting. What is the current state of LED technology, where might advances lead in the future and what alternatives are likely?Second, the greater use of daylight, which as a carbon-neutral source has been seen as another potential answer to the question of environmental sustainability in lighting. What are its advantages and drawbacks, does the implementation of daylighting save energy, and what new technologies might change the situation?In both the above cases, I will look at how a push towards greater sustainability might affect the preservation of objects and accessibility of collections, factors that have sometimes been termed people-centred measures of sustainability. In other words, to what extent do we upset the hard-won balance between preservation and access in the name of environmental sustainability?The solution, I will argue, is that our policies need to be driven by sustainability-based decision making, but that in so doing our definition of sustainability must go beyond that traditionally associated with environmental concerns to include considerations of people-centred sustainability that address the current and future perspectives of individuals, groups and societies.

Letters to a Pre-Scientist is a free, accessible, and easy avenue for conservation outreach. Letters to a Pre-Scientist is a program that connects 5th-10th grade science students in low-income communities across the US to an international network of STEM professionals. Each student, or “pre-scientist”, is paired with a STEM professional and over the course of a school year, they correspond through eight letters. The letters discuss higher education pathways, career journeys, and overcoming obstacles. After you’re accepted to be a pen pal, you complete a training module to prepare you for writing to an audience you might not generally interact with. The training modules teach you how to tell compelling stories in STEM and adapt complex or abstract ideas to middle school reading levels. The resources available through the training portal dive into the systematic challenges around inequitable STEM education in the US and how to close the gap in communities. The goal of LPS is to broaden students’ awareness of what STEM professionals look like, demystify STEM career pathways, and inspire their curiosity about a future in STEM. 




      Students are matched with scientists based on their interests, allowing students who are interested in art to be paired with a conservator. In my first year as a pen pal, I was assigned to a 12-year-old girl who was interested in art but was not excited about STEM. Through images, diagrams, and compelling storytelling, I was able to discuss current work I was doing and how it combined art with science. I related aspects of my work, such as corrosion on metal objects, to what the student was learning in her science class. The Letters to a Pre-Scientist program also allows you to send class activities to the science teacher, enabling conservators to pass along hands-on conservation workshops such as testing pH on old paper. I was able to talk to my pen pal about my own academic struggles in chemistry and how I overcame them.  We were able to form a relationship on a personal level by discussing her friends, music interests, and our pets. Doing so humanized me as a STEM professional. Not only was the program fulfilling on a personal level, but the training also empowered me to learn more about systematic barriers within the cultural heritage field. The program has also challenged me to explain my work in a new way and has made me more confident speaking to intergenerational audiences. Letters to a Pre-Scientist is ideal for all conservators looking to make a difference, including emerging professionals who want to become more involved in outreach or private practice conservators who don’t have access to institutional outreach programs.

This year, we piloted a new program at the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts, titled Our Stuff, Our Stories, which functions as a community-driven preservation pop-up. Designed to launch in full as part of the Philadelphia 250th commemoration of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, we seek to reach communities who have been left out of the promises of the Declaration, and indeed, they are often the same people for whom preservation of cultural heritage can feel out of reach.

In developing this program which offers a mix of preservation services, conservation consultation, digitization, and oral storytelling, we wanted to create something flexible and adaptable to the needs of the community organizations involved. To do so, we presented this program as a menu of options of what we might do, not what we should do, thereby taking a backseat to each organization’s goals and priorities to function more in a support role. While each iteration of Our Stuff, Our Stories will look unique, we will offer lessons learned so far, as well as tips on community-driven programming and how you can create something similar at your organization.

The ability to generate 3D models of heritage objects opens up many exciting possibilities for conservation. However, the options for 3D digitizing objects are either prohibitively expensive for many cultural institutions (structured light scanning and laser scanning), or too slow and skill-dependent to be of use in scanning large collections (photogrammetry). In an effort to address the limitations of photogrammetry as a commodity 3D digitization technique, a game programmer and a conservator began collaborating to reduce the total time for producing a model to ~10 minutes.

This paper presents their interim results on doing photogrammetry quickly, accurately, and reproducibly using an automated turntable and multi-camera arm along with Agisoft Metashape Pro and a processing pipeline written in the Python programming language. 

The pipeline script waits for photographs from a multi-camera, processing them and building masks while photos continue being taken. A palette of computer-readable markers placed beneath the object on the turntable allows for scaling and the orientation of the object in space such that each model is oriented and scaled consistently in relation to the others. When photography has completed, the images are automatically built into a model using Agisoft Metashape Pro. The finished model is exported, and an archival render of the 3D model is taken using Blender.  

After initial setup and configuration, the pipeline requires little further user input and can build a model in as little as ten minutes and thirty seconds from starting photography to the export of the final model.  The pipeline script is extensible, configurable, and is usable with or without an automated turntable. This  method promises to make photogrammetry not only faster, but more efficient, consistent, and accessible to a wider number of institutions.

Ongoing developments have created a more enlightened understanding of the complex relationships between Indigenous communities, collections care, and museums. The inception of the Preservation of Tribal Cultural Materials in Tribal Collections program began in 2008-2009 as a pilot hybrid course offered through UCLA Extension to address the needs of full-time workers for education in the care of Indigenous heritage. The course was revitalized and offered again in 2020 in a fully virtual format, with extensive evaluation of the benefits, accessibility, and affordability of this structure. An expanded program, offered from 2022-2025 with generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, focuses on the unique histories, challenges, and contributions of Native peoples to their respective communities and how to honor and preserve associated heritage and belongings.




Under the leadership of Professor Ellen Pearlstein of the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program, this three-year fully supported program offered two iterations of three unique fully online courses in preservation techniques, collections management, and exhibition planning for Indigenous heritage collections. These courses were instructed by established members in the field who are already incorporating Native perspectives into course design.




In addition, UCLA/Getty partnered with two museums to offer in-person regional workshops, one in California and one in New York, for Native heritage stewards to engage with care and conservation of collections, with instruction by conservator Nicole Passerotti who directs the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation, and Michelle Brownlee, collections manager at the Field Museum. The workshops were planned around topics suggested by participants, and aided in skill building for enclosures, introduction to risks in museum environments, and basic cleaning methods for a variety of materials, while also providing opportunities for networking and engagement with Native stewards in their region of the US.




In this presentation, we will describe the successes and challenges posed through this work and discuss how continued offering of these types of learning opportunities has been beneficial to Indigenous communities through participation and peer mentorship. We will also discuss shifts in collections care pathways that encourage students who are at different levels of their career or who come from diverse backgrounds to find suitable introductions to conservation training opportunities.

This paper reports on recent conservation and site preservation efforts at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Jebel Barkal, with a focus on how the catastrophic civil war in Sudan has challenged, altered, and expanded our team’s mission. 

Located along the Nile in northern Sudan, the archaeological site of Jebel Barkal preserves one of the most important ancient cityscapes in Africa. Its archaeological remains document two millennia of unique artistic, social, political, and religious achievements by the powerful, ancient African empire of Kush and include temples, palaces, a settlement area, and more than 20 royal pyramid burials. Prior to the recent civil war, the site was a popular attraction for both international and Sudanese tourists. At the same time, it is also an integral part of the nearby modern community of Karima. 

Our team began work at Jebel Barkal in 2018, with a dual emphasis on archaeological research and site conservation and a deliberately collaborative approach that pairs Sudanese and foreign specialists as co-leads in every major project role. In the autumn of 2020, in part because of this collaborative leadership structure, we were fortunate to receive a generous award from the U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation to support conservation, site management, and community engagement efforts at the site. The COVID-19 pandemic and travel restrictions delayed our work, and our first full season of field conservation was held in 2023. One month after its conclusion, Sudan was suddenly and unexpectedly at war as two rival military generals battled for control of the country. Since that time, every aspect of our work has changed and, for Sudanese team members, our homes, jobs, financial security, family life, and daily existence have altered radically in stressful and exhausting ways.   

This talk explores our pre-war plans, how the war has affected the site and our project in both predictable and surprising ways—good and bad, and the hard questions we have asked ourselves as the months of war continue. Our project’s design and structure have helped us continue aspects of our work during the war, and we also reflect on why this has been successful for parts of the project but not for others. 

While aspects of our project are unique and site-specific, the challenges we face are similar to and may offer valuable insights for other conflict-prone communities. Key takeaways include an intersectional understanding of how armed conflict, economic fragility, and climate change are combining to devastating effect for cultural heritage sites around the world; the need for special programming for internally displaced people during armed conflicts; and the need for significant, strategic shifts in conservation capacity-building in conflict-prone countries.

Artifacts need to be stored somewhere, but there’s always a range of options from dirty basements to scorching attics with pests, mold, lead, and all sorts of other hazards and issues. It doesn’t happen in everyone’s career that they have to move an entire artifact collection, but usually when it does, they don’t get a choice on where the artifacts will be stored. Once in a great while, you get the opportunity to have a brand new custom storage facility, and if you’re REALLY lucky, then you’re included in the project to be able to advocate for the collection and how it will be stored. This was one of those times.

This was a construction project for a fully-roofed and insulated, three-hour fire-rated climate-controlled collection storage building inside of a “temporary” warehouse built in 1941. (We can see how well that temporary thing went.) To complicate this build further, this was to be done on a highly secure Naval base in Newport, RI. This complicates the process of finding contractors, getting people on base to do the work, getting construction equipment on the base, and what can even be ordered to be used for the project.

Thankfully, a trained conservator was brought into the project at the very beginning stages of it, making sure that every need was considered for the space to function best for the artifacts. Temperature, humidity, lighting, conservation equipment, sinks, door heights, exact high-density storage needs, fire suppression systems, office areas, etc. were all able to be considered in the beginning, instead of at the end, or not at all.

This talk will cover the struggles and triumphs from the very beginning of the project, through its completion. Unforeseen problems along the way will be discussed to help others in the future for their own considerations when completing a similar project. Conservators aren’t, generally speaking, also construction specialists, so hopefully, this talk will give some helpful tips to be considered in other collections’ construction projects.

The 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York, NY houses a collection honoring and commemorating the victims, survivors, first responders, and recovery workers of both the catastrophic 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. In addition to oral histories, digital images, audio, and video, the collection comprises approximately 30,000 physical objects, including damaged and recovered artifacts, items donated in memory of victims, and tribute art. Many of these items are composed of ephemeral, light-sensitive materials which were never intended to be preserved. However, their personal significance, and the resulting need for accessibility to the local, national, and global 9/11-affected communities cannot be overstated.  In addition to a conservation approach that emphasizes the person connected with the object, other factors associated with a memorial museum context complicate the decision-making process for artifact lighting and display.  

Storytelling personal narratives is a primary consideration from the acquisition phase through installation, exhibition, and storage, particularly because stakeholders are also predominantly the collection’s donors. Decision-making for exhibition duration and light levels becomes a collaborative but sometimes fraught process between the conservation, curatorial, and exhibition teams. For every object slated for display, 9/11 Memorial Museum staff must consider its myriad values which may include its historical value, its associated individual victims or stories, its significance as evidence of the attacks, and the existence of identical objects or similar examples. We must also weigh its social value, i.e., the perceived needs of both present-day community members and future generations with no living memory of the day. These values factor in addition to material concerns. The inevitable result of achieving this balance is longer display periods and the reluctant acceptance of potential fading. 

We propose that “lifetime fading allowances” be flexible to acknowledge that a particular object may have greater impact to the current generation than to a nebulous “posterity.” When “light” and “dissociation from social/trauma context” are given equal weight as agents of deterioration, the decision to keep light-sensitive objects off view resting in storage is not so straightforward. This is especially true if an object contains a fugitive material that will degrade in storage regardless.  

Conservators at the 9/11 Memorial Museum are working across departments to collaborate on a lighting policy unique to the needs our institution. These include staff resources; bespoke and inaccessible exhibition fixtures; and a lack of light-induced fading data for many of the unique and under-studied materials on display. As the factors weighing lighting decisions in traumatic contexts are not always straightforward, we are developing a decision tree to help parse out the questions bearing significance providing clarity to an otherwise daunting and subjective process. This talk will provide examples that highlight the nuances of this approach, including the identification of duplicate or similar objects as substitutions, or the creation of facsimiles, where physically and ethically feasible. As current caretakers, we acknowledge the privilege to make these subjective decisions that affect future generations’ ability to understand, display, and view these artifacts and the gravity and accuracy of their stories.

In recent years, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art Department for Conservation and Scientific Research (CSR) has increased efforts to make its work known to the public. This includes the development of resources and public programs, including in-gallery cart talks and Art & Me family workshops. The success of these efforts and interest in furthering them led to the creation of the position that I now hold: an outreach specialist, with a background in education and outreach, who could develop new ways to introduce conservation to diverse audiences. This presentation will discuss the opportunities and challenges associated with establishing a conservation outreach position in our museum.

This position is unusual in several ways and required creativity in establishing standard practice. First, given the position did not require a background in conservation, initial months were focused on observation and inquiry. This period was also spent exploring existing content, which could be applied in new ways without the need to borrow excessive time from colleagues. Additionally, the whole department needed to adapt to an increase in outreach output. Conservators and scientists learned to share their work methods and identify projects that could tell conservation stories.

The establishment of this position also redefined the CSR department’s relationship with other departments, particularly Marketing and Communications (MAC) and Education. Given that CSR could begin producing programs and materials with greater independence, it was important to configure these activities into the greater fabric of the museum. Furthermore, as these departments were peers in terms of their roles in the museum, they were ideal collaborators for projects requiring more than one outreach or education staff member. Although there had been some previous collaboration with family programs, more regular channels of communication were established between CSR and other relevant departments. Through these channels, significant opportunities for collaboration took shape.

The establishment of this position has been a shared effort, making possible a number of opportunities. CSR now contributes more content to social media, resulting in regular in-depth posts about conservation. In March 2024, this led to the most popular post in museum history, with over one million views, which featured one of our paper conservators. CSR also designs and facilitates a hands-on conservation workshop for visiting students. In its first year, the program reached over one thousand sixth grade students from Fairfax County Public Schools, the ninth largest school division in the U.S. It is expected to reach a similar number of students this school year. CSR also expanded its conservation family workshops so that they now reach children ages 3-11 and occur twice as often. While the establishment of an outreach specialist position in CSR required a great deal of creativity and effort, it has not only expanded awareness of our work, but also increased our connectedness to other departments in our museum.

Objects tell stories of craft, use and care, from their creation to their preservation. Preservation is showcased in museums in various capacities but is usually not directly noticeable. At times, conservation is undertaken in the public view, whether it is on a site or as part of a visible lab. In the latter case, it might often be in a temporary or small space. 

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) has gone further. The Stories We Keep: Conserving Objects from Ancient Egypt exhibit is directly focusing on conservation, while displaying Ancient Egyptian artefacts. Resources are dedicated to sharing behind the scenes activities with the public and putting conservation in the spotlight. It invites visitors to reflect on “things” that have value to them, then to see how the museum cares for objects through different methods and tools, that are part of a conservation approach. A third part of the exhibit is a functional large size visible conservation lab.  

The development of the exhibit was possible thanks to the renovation of the Ancient Egypt exhibit, put in place in 1990. The style very much reflected on the design aesthetics and education style of the time, involving human remains on view. The advanced deterioration of a large 4,000-year-old Dahshur boat initiated a reflection on the renovation of the exhibit. It was coordinated nicely with the approval of the new CMNH’S Human Remains policy in 2023, defining how human remains in general are to be handled, displayed, and returned. The policy went into effect immediately, therefore the three mummified people on display, and the coffins and grave goods associated with them, had to be removed from public view.  

To better care for the human remains and the boat, the exhibition closed in 2023, with the goal of reinterpreting the collection and the space with updated knowledge on the Ancient Egyptian artefacts and new policies on human remains. Knowing that the public was very attached to the Ancient Egyptian exhibit and collection, CMNH decided to create this temporary and transitional exhibit, focusing on the way collections are cared for and on conservation in general, and allowing the public to witness the preservation of artefacts in progress. The public also has the opportunity to speak with the conservation team through an open window on a regular basis to learn about conservation work, how an institution works, and discuss various museum related topics. Besides, this has allowed to expose/inspire a career to the general public and students at the nearby colleges and high schools, as well as to recruit interns and volunteers. Educational outreach is central to the project. 

The exhibition is a great example of a collaboration between the departments of Conservation, Anthropology, Exhibits and Education, with full support of the museum’s director. They were involved in the development of the idea, the building of the space and the lab, as well as the efficient running of the exhibition and associated educational programs. Aspects of collection care, safe storage, mounting, and integrated pest management, among others, are additionally presented and addressed in this space. General collection care is a central theme of the exhibition and of the work in the conservation lab. 

The visible lab was a long-term dream of Gretchen Anderson, the Head of Conservation at CMNH, after working in a similar lab at the Science Museum in Minneapolis. Conservators and conservation technician, interns and volunteers are currently working on the preparation of Ancient Egyptian artefacts for the new exhibit called Egypt on the Nile, planned to open in the fall 2026. Aside from this focus project, the team supports all the museum’s departments with their specific conservation needs.  

The Stories We Keep visible conservation lab in the middle of an exhibit is a hub, a place of collaboration with other departments, such as Ornithology, Herpetology and Paleontology, and has been a great educational tool to share with the public and build communities, and a connector between the public and the museum professionals.  

This paper will present the genesis of the project and the evolution into a spotlight on conservation.  It will describe the conservation lab, the collaborations across the museum, and all the exchanges that the project has fostered. The paper will express successes and challenges of such a space, and future evolutions of the exhibition.

In Brazil, there are very few options for education in conservation, and none in the state of São Paulo. The University of São Paulo (USP), the largest in Brazil, does not offer any degree programs in conservation and restoration. In 2018, some USP affiliates founded the Preventive Conservation Network of USP (REDE) aiming to promote heritage preservation initiatives such as discussion groups, events, training sessions, and courses to address this gap.

Amongst courses organized by REDE, the “Preventive Conservation of Collections Course” is the most successful in terms of public interest and feedback. This course is divided into three sequential modules: 1 - The Impact of the Building and Its Surroundings; 2 - Collection Management; and 3 - Conservation Science for Collections. Each module consists of 36 hours divided into online classes, site visits, and hands-on training. It emphasizes the practical application of the content, ideally using the institution where students work as a case study. The course is coordinated by REDE and features five to six experts teaching specific topics.

Until now, Module 1 has been offered three times (2022, 2023, 2024); Module 2 is being prepared and will be available in early 2025; and Module 3 is planned. The demand has been steadily increasing (over 70 applications for 25 places in 2024). The students are primarily from the state of São Paulo, but many come from other states as well. It has an affordable price, and its hybrid format makes it accessible to those who work and study in parallel. As teachers, we have observed that, despite being a short-term course, the engagement, quality of discussions, and results are excellent. The final project typically generates a diagnostic with proposals for the analyzed areas that are presented to colleagues and teachers, giving a unique view of the diverse realities of Brazil.

The case studies profile is very broad: from big public cultural institutions to smaller places run by volunteers. As teachers, we have the privilege to see the diversity and richness of collections, but we also feel the enormous challenge of preserving them. The exchange of experiences shows that, independently of the resources available, the presence of qualified personnel must be an essential goal.

The feedback we receive consistently highlights the quality of the course content, which addresses cutting-edge topics of preventive conservation and presents an evaluation methodology for collection storage facilities developed by the School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP). Students and teachers stay connected by WhatsApp group and, even after two years we still observe active networking.

At the AIC Annual Meeting, we would like to present the results of the REDE strategy of investing in courses and training focused on advanced knowledge in preventive conservation. This approach has been successful in the vertical dissemination of knowledge (from teachers to students) and also in the horizontal exchange of experience (among all participants).  We also want to reflect on the urgent need for USP to establish formal public education programs to secure the preservation of our cultural and scientific heritage.

For the past three years, the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona, the oldest library in the world, has been the site of a manifold collaboration among four scientific- and two scholarly teams representing eight countries to solve one of the most intractable problems in cultural heritage imaging. The Palimpsests in Danger project was convened to address the illegibility of two of the most important palimpsests in existence: the Verona Gaius, the only remaining witness to Roman law, and the Verona Vergil which, along with known undertexts containing Euclid and Livy, we revealed to contain a new Apuleius. 

Over two centuries, both palimpsests had been treated with multiple layers of two different chemicals: oakgall reagent and Gioberti tincture. The manuscripts, their parchment weakened by the reagents’ corrosive acids, were then disbound and set in gelatin. Creating a chemical layer that overwhelms fluorescent response from the parchment and attenuates the infrared, the chemical reagents proved to be nearly insuperable impediments to even state-of-the-art multispectral imaging.  

To learn more about the precise nature of the challenge and to find effective recovery techniques, the Early Manuscript Electronic Library, supported by the Lazarus Project, the University of Hamburg, and the University of Torun, organized a program of material analysis, new imaging modalities, and innovative image processing techniques all supported by a grant from the Arcadia Foundation. XRF, XRD, and Raman spectroscopy furnished specifics about inks and reagents, whilst scanning XRF, IR Reflectography, RTI, and the newly-developed techniques of IR Fluorescence MSI and scanning Optical Coherence Tomography (OCD) yielded new images of the undertext. 

This talk will reveal our results for the first time, covering the exact chemical and imaging challenges of chemical reagent-damaged manuscripts, the advantages and drawbacks of each technology and processing technique used, show never-before-seen images of the undertexts from the Gaius and the Vergil palimpsests, and make recommendations for best practice. Above all, it will highlight the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration among scientists and scholars from the US (EMEL, University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, UCLA) and Europe (University of Hamburg, University of Torun, the Sorbonne, Oxford University, the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona).

The use of wood is an integral part of Ukrainian culture, and the tradition of wooden building technology goes through the whole history of Ukraine, back to the very beginning of architecture. Its diversity and richness may impress even those who are well familiar with the best examples of the world's wooden heritage. Wooden churches are the quintessence of Ukrainian wooden building tradition. There are thousands of historic wooden churches in Ukraine. Many of them are understudied or introduced into scientific discourse in very general terms, the vast majority are completely unknown in the world, and all of them are endangered today, as the most vulnerable and fragile structures under the threat of Russian attacks.




After Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we face many challenges in addition to those concerning conservation under normal circumstances. Scale of the damage, legislative issues on war damaged landmarks, conservation as a long lasting process while heritage buildings, if damaged and in use, require immediate response, cooperation with emergency services, database of damages and prioritizing sites in terms of conservation potential and even possibility - these are just a few to mention.




We do make attempts to preserve our heritage though, in particular wooden architecture.  Among other initiatives, a project has been launched to digitally document endangered valuable wooden churches. We have defined the heritage value, architectural typology, the threat level and the accessibility (proximity to the frontline and to the border with the enemy, artillery strike risk, liberation of occupied territories etc) as the main criteria of choice of the sites. The first selected 11 oldest wooden churches in Central, Northern and Eastern Ukraine have been scanned with a 3D scanner and photo-documented on three expeditions in November 2023 - February 2024. These were 17th - 18tth century churches in Pechera, Puhachivka, Novomoskovsk, Novy Bilous, Sedniv, Syniavka, Stepanivka, Novhorod Siversky, Pyrohivka, Fastiv and Zhubrovychi. Six of these sites have overlived occupation and still remain under direct threat - a number of neighboring villages have been shelled just while we were scanning churches in Syniavka and Stepanivka. The project is ongoing as we are writing this abstract, and another 25 churches are waiting for their turn.




3D scanning together with photogrammetric surveying is one way to give these churches a chance. It allows us to record very accurately, get the maximum data in the shortest time, explore later and safe structures in detail with the understanding of colors and textures. This is valuable in case of damage or loss of a heritage building. This project is also the first stone laid for further thorough study of Ukrainian wooden churches. Unlike the western region of the country, most of the churches in question happened to be in use of the Russian Orthodox Church, due to the complexity of the Ukrainian situation, which made them inaccessible for Ukrainian scientists and architects. The last time these churches were explored as the phenomenon of Ukrainian wooden architecture was in the 1920s by the famous Ukrainian art historian and professor Stefan Taranushenko.

On October 10th, 2019, at 8:30am, I started my job as Natural History Conservator at the Yale Peabody Museum. That same day at 11 o’clock, I had a meeting on how to protect the Age of Reptiles and Age of Mammals murals by Rudolph Zallinger during construction. This need for conservation knowledge and expertise continued for the remainder of the project, which ended in the spring of 2024 with the reopening of the entire museum after four years of closure.

Work during construction involved liaising with construction workers, architects, and engineers, as well as with museum leadership and colleagues. The conservation staff consisted of only me and one fellow initially focused on moving collections (and later on, on treatment of Anthropology objects). Partnerships with other departments that were not able to carry out their normal duties due to the pandemic, as well as with museum assistants made the work manageable and delegation of tasks possible. During this time, my lab at the museum was demolished and I had to move all my operations to the Shared Conservation Lab at Yale’s West Campus, as well as to a small museum classroom that was not to be renovated until the new Conservation triage space was to be built. In addition, object lists were being completed and exhibit layouts were being held by Exhibits with curators and collection managers, and me.

In 2022, I was asked a crucial question: what do you need? Being alone at the time, I answered: interns. In November of that year, the museum hired for the first time two pre-program interns for one year (positions that were later on extended). Their job was to be trained in the treatment of objects and specimens, to work on their portfolios, to have the experience of being in a renovation, and to learn what it is like to work in a museum. With my team in place, we started the impossible task of condition reporting and treating hundreds to thousands of objects and specimens with ever-changing object lists and gallery priorities.

This renovation taught me many things. As a colleague, it taught me to anticipate the needs of others. As a liaison, it taught me to speak in many other languages to get points across and to make those working with me get a sense of belonging. As a manager, it taught me that the more involved my team is in every aspect of the project, the more they will understand the bigger picture. As a mentor, it taught me to prioritize the education of the interns over the goals of the project. As a conservator, it taught me that you can always do more, but you have to learn to stop.

The Yale Peabody Museum reopened its doors in the spring of 2024 with a newly renovated museum. Conservation was involved early enough in planning but being new, I had to build trust with every person at the museum. To this day, I continue to work on this.

The stewardship and exhibition of cultural heritage collections demands careful balance between preservation, institutional mandates, and visitor experience. Conservators and curators at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF) have been refining tools and techniques for managing light exposure while navigating a range of factors that have impacted methods of implementation – creating challenges and providing new avenues for thinking about how our actions impact the collections in our care. Four of these factors will be discussed – institutional priorities, improvements to data collection and interpretation, impact on staff, and the role of visitors – with a brief discussion of future plans.   

With 35 galleries across two museums and limited staff, curators and conservators are regularly asked to extend exhibition periods beyond originally scheduled end dates. Institutional habits and staff resource availability have been the driving factor for exhibition decision making. The conservation team has increased efforts to incorporate data into exhibition planning conversations by tracking light exposure levels and durations for motion-activated lighting and measuring light-induced change through spectrophotometry.  These documentation activities are incorporated into long-standing exhibition practices. We are now able to introduce exhibit light budgets, based on this data, with a corresponding review triggered when the budget is near exhaustion. The predictive data from microfade testing is expected to further inform light budgets.   

Pressures to extend exhibition durations of sensitive media have a direct impact on staff. They express concerns about knowingly inducing significant change in collections. This has required a reframing of the language used to describe the impact of our exhibition policies, shifting from “damage” to “change”. Longer exhibition durations yield reduced opportunities for curatorial research and writing exhibitions. Collaborative conversations about exhibition lengths, initially framed around light levels and sensitivity of artifacts, have become a platform to advocate for limiting exhibition durations based on CWF’s mission as an educational institution and our preference to rotate objects or curate new exhibitions regardless of sensitivity of the media. Lack of long-term planning impacts how collections are treated. The perception of staff time being inordinately usurped by maintenance of light-sensitive media overrides consideration for the sensitivities of other object types like paintings and furniture on display in exhibitions not officially described as permanent.  

Historically, the visitor’s role in exhibition decisions has been based on assumptions. Staff now collect data on the use of light dosage limiting efforts, like motion activated or push button lighting, to better understand how visitors interact with exhibition spaces with low light levels. A new emphasis on visitor surveys provides valuable information to help us understand our visitors and their perceptions and preferences.   

The development of these policies is ongoing, with an eye toward addressing objects that have been on display for long periods of time. Bringing these discussions to the forefront makes us more collaborative in implementing decisions that balance preservation and access.

People of all ages dream of superpowers that allow them to play doctor with X-ray vision, detective with ultraviolet lights, or artist with powdered pigments. The exhibition Concealed Layers: Uncovering Expressionist Paintings invited audiences to share in these roles through the process of technical imaging and analysis. This project highlighted new discoveries made during a three-year study of the Saint Louis Art Museum’s world-class collection of German Expressionist paintings. The two-gallery show explored eleven paintings through methods ranging from physical examination to diagnostic imaging with radiography, infrared, and ultraviolet light–all designed to help identify the artist’s materials and techniques. Developed by a conservation-curatorial team, this research was then embraced by departments across the museum (e.g. learning and engagement, design, digital interpretation, marketing, development, and information technology) to create an experimental, education-focused exhibition with “behind-the-scenes” sneak peeks. Originally set to run from March until August 2024, the exhibition dates were extended through that October to capitalize on the fruitful STEAM opportunities.  

This presentation will take a candid approach to sharing how Concealed Layers matured from concept to installation–challenges, triumphs, and missteps included. Full immersion into the science-laden world of technical analysis, a new venture for the museum, demanded expansion of its interpretative strategies. What are the most effective ways to display an internal layer of a painting, hidden to the naked eye? Internal debates tackled everything from cost efficiency to display safety (e.g. is an X-ray emitting device perceived as safe?). Shared goals danced between engaging multigenerational visitors with artists’ techniques and materials without overwhelming them with dense science lessons. Colleagues in digital assets developed interactive content for media consoles plus evergreen web content, and educators flexed STEAM outreach programming (K-12 plus universities). The exhibition occupied two galleries that are typically installed with the permanent, non-rotating collection and intersected with multiple doorways. Therefore, the museum used trackers to measure “hot zones” to map preferred pathways as visitors navigated the space. Additionally, summer interns in education conducted comprehensive visitor interaction surveys of the exhibition. Their collective data on visitor engagement has offered invaluable encouragement of successes and, critically, areas for improvement. 

Conservation-based content is not always easy for museum professionals to display. Concerns surrounding appropriate content (i.e. image rights, oversharing of condition concerns, etcetera) is often uncomfortable for stakeholders, and museum educators still face apprehension of didactic interpretation that is, by nature, science dense. Sharing a transparent view of an exhibition’s variable triumphs and challenges in educational programming and public reception may promote traction for similar projects.

The collaboration between the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Spelman

College Museum of Fine Art, and the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Collective represents a

significant initiative to enhance diversity in the conservation field. This partnership aims to

provide collections care exposure, education, and pipeline opportunities for students from the

AUC, which includes Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse College. As

part of the world’s largest consortium of historically Black institutions, this collaboration

leverages the AUC Art History and Curatorial Studies Collective, an emerging leader in

nurturing Black art historians, curators, and museum professionals. As an active educational

partner of the AUC Collective and the only museum in the nation with a mission focused on

women artists of the African diaspora, the Spelman Museum is uniquely poised to respond to

calls for social and racial justice impacting the museum industry.




Through a $500,000 IMLS grant, the Spelman Museum focuses on advancing collections care,

accessibility, and diversity. The project emphasizes educational programs and student

participation, offering work-study and internship opportunities to foster hands-on experience in

conservation while digitization and organization of the museum's collection, which comprises a

nationally recognized repository of works by Black artists.




The initiative also explores integrating conservation into the AUC Collective curriculum,

offering workshops and exploring various training modules. This collaboration aims to make

significant strides in diversifying the field of conservation and enhancing the cultural vitality of

the museum industry.




Keywords: Diversity, Conservation, Education, Collaboration, Atlanta University Center,

Spelman College, Collections Care, Museum Studies, AUC Collective

In 2019-2024, The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) commissioned, exhibited and acquired the artwork Body Sculpture by provocative American artist Jordan Wolfson. Body Sculpture utilizes an industrial robot suspended from a gantry, and a metal animatronic cube form with arms and hands.  Across choreographed phases, the cube performs humanistic behaviors and emotional states: drumming its surface with its hands, being swung and beaten whilst suspended by a chain from the ABB robot, simulating states of playfulness, sexuality, shame, rage and death.  

The technical complexity of the artwork is unparalleled in the NGA’s collecting history. The production of the artwork included Jordan Wolfson Studio collaborating with diverse specialists including choreographers, highly specialized roboticists, software engineers and structural engineers. The extended production phase of the artwork in the US, meant limited access from Australia, and ongoing technical refinements extended beyond the exhibition opening due to both the complex nature of the work and the ongoing artist investment.  

Meeting Australian robotic safety standards, digital security requirements and battery safety regulations were managed in a variety of ways: including contracting a robotic safety robustness report and developing a risk management framework to distribute responsibilities between risk stewards, ensuring ongoing responsibility for public and artwork safety. 

The specialized knowledge required to build the artwork means that critical knowledge of technical properties is distributed between a network of specialists, holding at times proprietary knowledge and resulting in a reliance on contractors. Acquiring Body Sculpture required transfer of a basic level of operational knowledge to the museum, and this was transferred particularly when the 4 person US led technical team moved to an entirely local team, with online support as needed.  

The documentation of operational and maintenance skills was undertaken by technicians and conservators and included extensive manual review and development, the production of facsimile components for future training purposes, video documentation, maintenance logs, performance statistics and iteration specific documentation. The documentation requirements essential for transferring this operational knowledge challenged NGAs internal document management processes. This prompted development of new processes across departments to manage the scope and complexity of produced documentation, leading to the development of a centralized document management system for complex artworks.

Body Sculpture exists at the intersection of materiality and the technological cutting edge. Decisions made during commissioning and exhibition of the work resulted in the ongoing development and evolution of the performative outcome. It is inevitable as technology changes and evolves, so too will the realization of this work. Central to ensuring its continued success is a robust yet flexible documentation approach. Throughout this presentation the authors reflect on the ongoing challenge of ensuring future transfer of knowledge from disparate subject matter experts, operation technicians and internal stakeholders. The role of the conservator throughout this process is discussed, as well as reflections on the realities of relinquishing control over the direct material outcome of the work and instead locating oneself in a stepped back role of mapping and maintaining the interconnecting relationships between disparate subject experts whose experiences combined actualize the work.

Embedding Community Conservators in Public Libraries: Conservation as a Public Service is a new program being launched by the presenters. Community conservators will be library employees empowered by the remit to provide free, readily available, and in-person preservation services to individuals, groups, and institutions that don’t have the capacity to hire conservators and/or wish to be more hands-on in the care of their collections. They will:

* offer individual and group consultations on the care of personal and institutional items that can be transported to the library

* make “house” calls to provide guidance regarding the care of entire collections and objects that cannot be moved to the library

* offer disaster preparedness and response training, and guidance during disaster recovery

* hold workshops to teach material treatment skills and storage techniques to people of all ages, in the form of single workshops, series, summer camps and more

* provide open studio time when individuals and groups can work on conserving their objects with assistance from the community conservator

* facilitate events and discussions centered around the celebration of and/or mourning the loss of cultural heritage



This project builds on programs and workshops the project directors have already run, and a wide variety of work carried out by regional centers, field services programs, statewide heritage organizations and others. Our program will take the exciting, and as yet uncharted, path to providing the free exchange of knowledge and skills the public needs to preserve their personal and community cultural heritage, out of the heritage institution setting and into public libraries. 




Personal scrapbooks, quilts, photographs, journals, painted murals on the building next door, art in a local restaurant, archives of local religious institutions and historical societies and community organization are important to people and play crucial roles in maintaining a sense of identity, developing a sense of belonging, and acknowledging individual and collective cultural value. When people preserve these things they are uplifted and empowered, and their social well-being improves. 




Conservators hold valuable, specialized knowledge about the care and repair of cultural heritage and disaster preparedness and response that can help preserve these things. Accessing this knowledge outside the institutions and art galleries that typically employ these conservators is challenging, due primarily to cost and availability barriers, but also societal prioritization. Institutional structures and systems in the United States are more commonly organized to place conservators in cultural institutions and prestigious art galleries, responsible for the care and preservation of collections they hold. Many have tried to overcome these barriers by providing free conservation consultations to members of the public and hosting conservation resources on institutional websites, but this is resource intensive and hard to maintain. 




The community conservator project has a vision to launch programs in public libraries across the country in order to establish conservation as an accessible public service. It will also build new training paths for people to become community conservators, creating a new sector of the field for practitioners.

The field of cultural heritage is experiencing a profound reckoning regarding whose culture is preserved and why, while also addressing the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. Facing these challenges requires leadership skills to navigate the tensions between the histories we inherited, current field needs, and uncertain futures–no leadership training program currently exists that directly speaks to the work we do. Our collective, comprising national, regional, institutional, and independent partners is laying the groundwork for a pilot program. This session previews the earliest stages of building with opportunities to get involved in the future.

Imagine, what could conservation leadership training for our field look like? What are the characteristics of great leaders? What does it mean to lead with a foundation of cultural equity? And why does this matter? We are shaping space for a national Summit (Washington, DC 2025) with panels and working group sessions to address these questions and collectively form building blocks of a NEW Conservation Leadership Program with a foundation in cultural equity (pilot 2026). We need your imagination and action.

Americans for the Arts defines cultural equity as "Embodying the values, policies, and practices that ensure that all people — including but not limited to those who have been historically underrepresented based on race/ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, citizenship status, or religion — are represented” in the development of policy and fair distribution of programmatic, financial, and informational resources. Despite significant efforts to diversify the conservation field, the demographics in 2022 are still 80% white and 76% female (Mellon Foundation, Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey). Such a concentration of power and resources is contrary to cultural equity.

This matters because our decisions regarding collections are not theoretical. Our training, to preserve cultural heritage (artifacts), which focuses on “maintaining in an original or existing state” has also preserved systems of structural racism. Conservators require capacity building skills to facilitate cultural equity in our roles preserving history. Efforts to diversify the field will fail without creating conditions for inclusive cultures of belonging and attentiveness to the six conditions of systems change: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships & connections, power dynamics, and mental models (belief systems). 

This work is for leaders, no matter what age or positional authority, who want to further their skills within their community and organization.The Summit and subsequent Conservation Leadership Program focuses on conservators and allied professionals who have identified a need to shift the field and desire to be part of the collaborative efforts that impact systems change. Is this you?

Leadership takes many forms: management positions, organizational advocacy, committee work, and self-leadership (by example). The goal of this collaboration is to shift the field of cultural heritage preservation at a national level towards radical inclusion and cultural equity; thus ensuring the legacies of many instead of a few and catalyzing responsive succession planning. This four-year project, a first of its kind, offers a platform for dialogue and direction at a critical juncture in the field's evolution.

The conservation team at the National Museum of the American Indian strives to implement the Museum’s mission of service and partnership with its Native and Indigenous constituency, while acknowledging that we are continually learning how to effectively collaborate. The opening session presentation, given by our Head of Conservation, discussed in a broader sense the effective elements of collaboration learned over the years at the NMAI. It relayed how the spirit of collaboration, necessitates  operating in service to the collective goal, prioritizing the group’s objectives over individual agendas. Trust serves as the foundation for any collaborative endeavor and is built on consistent and transparent communication, reliability, and mutual respect. Humility, equitable power dynamic among all stakeholders, as well as truth recognition and an understanding of historical facts and present realities are essential. Power dynamics play a significant role in collaboration, balancing power among stakeholders ensures equitable participation. Access to relevant resources and open information sharing ensures well-informed decision making. Commitment follow-through and continuity are critical to maintaining trust, demonstrating reliability and sustainability supporting long-term impact. Preserving what is valued identifies and safeguards core principles, traditions, and goals essential to the collective identity and purpose of the collaboration.  

The NMAI has a long history of working with Indigenous communities and institutions throughout the Americas. Each engagement and partnership are unique with its own hurdles, successes and failures. During this presentation, we will take a closer look at our current, long-term collaborations and critically review their efficacies and frustrations. Through honest discussions with several current partners and colleagues, we hope to offer lessons learned that will contribute to and inform the larger goal of effective collaboration within our conservation community. While our partners will participate during the talk through prerecorded videos to respect their time and community commitments – acknowledging the difficulties attending the conference in person – we would like to offer a Q&A session with our colleagues remotely listening in following this talk.

The technical study of art, a valuable and rich field, is at its most effective when projects follow a collaborative approach.  Studies are frequently enhanced by and even dependent upon comparative data, whether this be underdrawings in Infrared Reflectograms, the scientific analysis of materials, or observations about the stratigraphy of paint layers.  However, obtaining such material is not always possible, and often reliant on the willingness of institutions to share information.  Recent initiatives by some museums and cultural institutions to make technical material accessible to both the scholarly and the general public in a digital form are very encouraging.  The publication of online catalogue entries of Early Netherlandish Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which include technical images and reports, is one such example.

In 2014 Keith Christiansen, Chairman of the Department of European Paintings, Maryan Ainsworth, Curator in European Paintings, and Michael Gallagher, Chairman of the Department of Paintings Conservation, initiated a project to expedite publication of an online catalogue of the Early Netherlandish collection by incorporating entries into the pre-existing object pages on the website.  In addition to updated art historical research (including provenance and bibliographical references), the online catalogue entries include detailed technical descriptions and materials analysis, as well as technical images.  Significant analytical support for this project was provided by Marco Leona, Scientist in Charge of the Department of Scientific Research, Research Scientists Silvia Centeno, and Federico Caró.  This initiative has made been possible by the support of Hester Diamond and the Slifka Foundation.  

Donor funding supported the time of one conservator, Sophie Scully, who works in collaboration with Maryan Ainsworth, curatorial Fellows, and curatorial department administrative and research staff.  Content of the texts is similar in scholarship and detail to that of a traditional print catalogue, including footnotes, references, and captions.  Since 2017, all images of public-domain artworks in The Met collection can be downloaded from the website at full resolution.  This enables us to efficiently share high resolution technical images for each entry.  The publication of the entries is being accomplished in a rolling manner, as completed and, as the website format is flexible, it allows updates to be done immediately and efficiently.  

Institutions seeking to digitize technical material are each operating in their own unique landscape with different aims, resources, and constraints, hence this undertaking at the Met is not offered as a blueprint but a case study.  Outlining some of the advantages of this project as well as the practical considerations might help others seeking to launch such initiatives and to stimulate discussion.  The digital publication of technical material and scholarship online has incredible potential: it could lessen barriers to accessing and sharing material and collapse the distance between far-flung works of art and scholars.  But there are some challenges, and as this is a critical moment for these relatively new initiatives, we wish to share our experiences and ideas.

As museums across the country are redefining and diversifying their collections, curators and conservators are increasingly seeking new approaches to forging cultural relationships and community building aiming to decentralize Western perspectives and foreground Indigenous and community voices. Much like textiles, Indigenous or community-centered cultural materials have been marginalized, undervalued, and misrepresented within museum collections and the broader art historical narrative. Textiles are often deeply embedded in sacred spaces and communal practices, serving as repositories of spirituality, identity, and memory. These parallels position textile conservators to approach cultural collaboration with a unique understanding, compassion, and respect that can influence the wider conservation practices.  

Traditional museum practices present that the care of an object is commonly predicated on its “value and significance” in the greater art historical narrative. This approach requires a fundamental shift when considering community-centered cultural material, where significance is deeply tied to cultural and spiritual identity. Such a transformation involves not only revising traditional conservation methodologies but also rethinking institutional language and everyday interactions with these objects. Therefore, fostering a deeper connection with communities that created these artworks is essential to long-term preservation strategies. 

Textile conservators, through their specialized skills and historical perspective, are uniquely equipped to lead institutions in integrating Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into conservation and museum practices. By foregrounding cultural knowledge keepers as experts and decolonizing institutional language and procedures, textile conservators can help ensure that the conservation efforts respect and honor cultural practice. This includes recognizing contributions of the “nameless” artists or “Once Known Weavers” and “Once Known Artists”, whose historical significance has been obscured over time.  

This presentation explores the distinct role of textile conservators in fostering community relationships and reshaping institutional practices. It argues that textile conservation, with its long history of collaboration and sensitivity to cultural context, offers broader lessons for the conservation profession as a whole. By embracing cultural perspectives and incorporating them into conservation protocols, textile conservators can help museums establish deeper connections with communities and create more inclusive narratives. 

Drawing on examples from the work being undertaken at the Toledo Museum of Art, this presentation will demonstrate how these strategies are being implemented to build meaningful connections with Indigenous communities. Through collaborative efforts, we are amplifying community voices, enhancing transparency, and creating a greater sense of belonging within the institution. This presentation invites the broader conservation community to reflect on how these practices can reshape the future of conservation, ensuring that cultural preservation is as much about people and relationships as it is about objects.

The nearly 30,000 artifacts at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum serve to bear witness to the terrorist attacks and commemorate and honor the stories of the 2,983 victims of September 2001 and February 1993 and all those who are affected in their aftermath. The museum’s nascent collection was the result of immediate action taken by local cultural heritage workers in collaboration with law enforcement and recovery organizations along with donations from survivors, victims’ families and friends, and local and global communities. These objects are in service to the people they represent and provide individual voices to a universal tragic experience.  Consultation and relationship-building with 9/11-community members and donors is integral to the Museum’s mission, and community input is considered in exhibition development. In this memorial context, the ability of an object to telegraph parts of a narrative may take priority over its material “authentic” state. 

Conservators at the Museum put great thought into when, how, and whether to provide conservation intervention, recognizing that any treatment can alter interpretation of objects that hold great personal significance. In instances of Ground Zero-recovered artifacts, they may be all that remains of someone who died that day. Generally, interventive treatment is limited to changes identified as occurring after a particular moment such as the day of attacks or the moment of acquisition. Even then, the decision to not treat is given heavier weight than it may at traditional cultural institutions; damage is often integral to the significance of an artifact. However, there are circumstances in which these principles accede to storytelling that represents or honors the community. This presentation discusses instances when intervention resulted in a visibly changed artifact, where the after-treatment condition is not only of greater physical stability, but also of greater accessibility and emotional power. 

Case studies include artifacts that have images of victims or other deeply personal associations where restoration of imagery such as faces was conducted even if the damage was part of the object’s “authentic” historical narrative. Another example is the consideration of the toxic dust that coated everything in lower Manhattan following the collapse of the buildings. Leaving the encrusted dust in place, the way the object was recovered, might be the most “accurate” method of display, but issues of toxicity and available resources introduced discussion of when it is appropriate to remove or consolidate dust. Decisions to abate dust may allow for highlighting one narrative (the impact of crumpled steel or the emblazoned logo of a particular FDNY Ladder company) over another (the pervasiveness of toxic dust), resulting in some of the institution’s most impactful visitor experiences. Consolidation of dust, on the other hand, which alters the chemical composition central to its toxicity narrative, may allow for an object to safely travel and experienced by a broader audience. For trauma heritage collections, we must acknowledge that loss of an object’s traumatic context may be inevitable. This means that decision-making around preservation and treatment can diverge from traditional methodologies.

Museums and other cultural heritage sites are working hard to attract and welcome more diverse audiences.  This talk will examine ways in which conservators can be a resource for finding and expanding the common ground between best visitor experiences and best practices in caring for collections.  The particular research to be presented is focused on improving access for visitors with blindness and partial blindness but, as in other contexts, an improvement intended for one group often extends well beyond that.

Art conservators are often the ones who have to balance the competing priorities of visitor access and protecting collections.  In museum settings this may translate to stanchions, platforms, vitrines, guards, alarms and “Please do not touch” signs.  But as any museum professional knows, people love to touch and feel things.  For people with visual impairments, being able to touch and feel the art is one of a limited set of options for experiencing the collection.  

Like other museums, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM) in Boston, offers guided touch tours for visitors with visual impairments; however, these tours are generally limited to a select group of three-dimensional objects.  Unlike sighted visitors, blind visitors do not have the opportunity to engage with two-dimensional works of art that typically hang framed on gallery walls.   

In response to the limitations of touch tours and a mid-career “itch”, in 2024 I applied for and received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to the University of Dundee in Scotland.  The subject of my work was to research ways of advancing the accessibility of two-dimensional works of art such as paintings, prints, drawings or photographs that have historically been excluded from museum touch tours.  At the university I was situated in an interdisciplinary studio within the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, called Studio Ordinary.  Studio Ordinary is a place where design research and disability studies come together so design can be used as a tool to change the conversation around disability.  

While the focus of my work was outside of the explicit confines of art conservation, I approached my research by centering on my deep experience as a practicing art conservator and the knowledge of materials that comes with that.  That experience and knowledge opened many doors, making it possible to collaborate with and learn from a range of colleagues including disability scholars, designers, artists, technology experts and members of the blind community.  I will show examples of prototypes we produced in Scotland, share the ways in which my project evolved to include multi-sensory experiences, and how this work is moving forward in Boston.

After the founding in 1888 of the Chemical Laboratory of the Berlin Museums, and following the Rome conference of 1930[1], the 20th century saw the development of museum labs on both sides of the Atlantic. In the US, the 1928 founding of the Fogg Museum’s Department of Technical Research at Harvard is considered the beginning of the modern conservation lab[2] .  As we near the 100 year anniversary of those pioneering museum conservators and scientists, it is useful to examine how the enterprise of institutionalized conservation practice has evolved in the 21st century in both the United States and Europe.

As part of a constellation of diverse and synergistic visions for future leadership within the field of  conservation, we present here the results of a survey exploring the evolution of the skills needed to successfully lead a contemporary museum practice that is both expansive and innovative.  

Recent surveys of business[3] and museum leaders[4] have evidenced shifts in the traits that are considered essential to successfully lead institutions. Translating this research to our contexts we asked : what has changed with respect to the past, and how can we ensure that we build a pipeline equipped to be successful in the future? 

Survey participants were asked to select and rank their top leadership traits out of a list of 30. A few museum Directors were also asked to prioritize the characteristics of the successful candidate for a headhunter.

Other questions aimed at exploring the public value of conservation and scientific research in museums in terms of communication, interpretation, publishing, public exhibitions and programs, pay equity, engaging with communities, and the museum’s responses to sustainability demands and restitution claims.

The results highlighted considerable alignment between museum directors and practitioners on several sets of key traits, including vision, integrity and an inclusive leadership style. Differences emerged in the value placed on skills that are essential for the day-to-day management of people and operations, versus reputational and strategic aspects of the role.

Overall, our results show that research and achievements in conservation and scientific research are being valued and shown in museums across the Atlantic. They demonstrate a steady progress towards eroding, if not completely disrupting, established institutional hierarchies and dismantling exclusionary labor practices that have so far favored a pipeline from privileged socioeconomic tiers into the profession.  

Our work also starts to chart the preferences that colleagues in the field have for leadership development opportunities, matching aspirations with financial sustainability and existing workloads. 

Building on these accomplishments, we imagine a future where conservators and scientists will consistently be leaders in the public facing mission of the museum, and have access to the resources that enable bold plans for change. If we want our field to continue to be a relevant force in the complex ecosystem of museums we need to invest in people and nurture the development of future leaders that will carry out this work. 

[1] Conference Internationale d’etude des methods scientifiiques appliques a l’examen et a la conservation des oeuvres d’art; Rome, October 13-17, 1930

[2] Bewer, Francesca G. 2010. A Laboratory for Art : Harvard’s Fogg Museum and the Emergence of Conservation in America, 1900-1950. Cambridge, MA, New Haven: Harvard Art Museum ; Yale University Press.

[3]  Hewlett, Sylvia Ann, 2024,The New Rules of Executive Presence: How leaders need to think and act now. Harvard Business Review,  p.134

[4] Sweeney, Liam and Joanna Dressel. "Art Museum Director Survey 2022: Documenting Change in Museum Strategy and Operations." Ithaka S+R. Last Modified 27 October 2022. https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.317777.

The Local History Services team at the Minnesota Historical Society was founded in 1916. For over a century it has supported smaller organizations across the state of Minnesota to interpret and preserve the history of their community. In 2019, Local History Services added a full-time conservator dedicated to supporting the capabilities of individuals and small organizations to care for their own collections. In part, this role was established to help with emergency planning, preparedness, and response for collecting organizations across the state of Minnesota.Minnesota is home to a thriving art, culture, and heritage community. As an example, there are an estimated 562 historical organizations in the state, ranging from tiny all-volunteer area history museums to the Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota is susceptible to natural disasters including tornados, flooding, fires, and winter storms that threaten the long-term preservation of cultural heritage.This presentation will discuss Local History Services role in emergency preparedness and response and how it has evolved to become more collaborative over time. The role of field services will be explored in examples ranging from in-person response and disaster plan writing workshops to mutual assistance networks and the Minnesota Alliance for Heritage Response. Finally, the crucial elements of partnership and respectful cooperation in our work will be highlighted.

This paper will explore the outcomes and lessons learned throughout a four-year IMLS grant-funded collaborative conservation project at the Avenir Conservation Center of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. During the project, entitled Northwest Coast Collection: Building Bridges and Detailed Conservation Survey, we welcomed over 20 Indigenous representatives from five North American Tribes and First Nations to engage with their cultural heritage and participate in shared decision-making about conservation and care of over 700 collection items. We found some common trends that spanned the groups across many topics, including how sensitive materials should be stored, tolerance of a significant amount of wear on objects that were made for use, and an acceptance of freezing items for pest prevention. There are also many examples of feedback unique to individual groups, such as one group’s interest in identifying original pigments and another group's strong desire to keep old museum labels adhered on objects. The project included two visits with a total of 14 Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation (Kwakwaka’wakw) community members from Gwa’yi (Kingcome Inlet, British Columbia); many of the visitors have direct familial ties to items in the DMNS collection, including parents and grandparents who made belongings in the collection. These visits demonstrated the power of expanding the participants beyond individuals who are accustomed to doing this type of work with museums. By including more representatives in the conversations, we were able to promote access to family treasures and facilitate discussions about future care for the items with the people who have the authority to make those decisions. The work with the representatives from Kingcome provided a different model for collaboration, as it became apparent that decision-making needed to be made at the family level for belongings that could be associated with a maker or owner. An important finding from the grant also included the importance of external collaboration between the museum and communities, as well as internal collaboration between museum departments to establish mechanisms for feedback from participants. In this project, the Museum’s Community Research and Collaboration department collected feedback from representatives during an evaluation session near the end of each visit. These sessions were an opportunity for visitors to candidly share what was successful during the visit, what could be improved, and what their hopes were for the future of the collaboration. The project has helped clarify what we can do as museum professionals to build trust and be better collaborators.

For centuries, museums have been the accepted authority on Indigenous cultural materials and have acquired and amassed indigenous cultural items for their own use and benefit with minimal consideration from source communities. This structure is built on the foundation of colonization that show the public a version of history that is often disconnected from descendant communities and Indigenous ways of knowing. Further, the heart of every museum is its collections, which are expressed through avenues of conservation, stewardship, education, exhibition, and research. The values expressed in museum collections stewardship resonate throughout an entire institution and set the tone for how an institution operates.  

In 2021, the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) working group was established to advocate for approaches that privilege Indigenous knowledge and respect and recenter concepts of culturally appropriate care for items in museum collections. These conversations transpired to the creation of the ICC guide, with its members consisting of diverse backgrounds, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous museum and academic professionals, tribal historic preservation officers, collections staff, and NAGPRA coordinators. The ICC guide is rooted in Indigenous perspectives and priorities, as well as practical applications. The document will not instruct museums on how to specifically care for each item, since protocols vary among communities, but will offer scalable considerations of culturally appropriate collections stewardship, with questions and talking points to address during a consultation, and with templates and case studies for use in implementation, advocacy, and the creation of policies and procedures. 

In dialogue with the conference theme, this paper focuses on years of collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous museum collection professionals and source communities to develop the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) guide. The development of the ICC guide is currently funded through an IMLS National Leadership Grant for Museums, under the School for Advanced Research (SAR). The guide will be available by 2026 and will be a free reference tool for preventive conservation and collection professionals that interact regularly with indigenous collections. Overall, the museum field has expressed a need for this resource. In a recent survey conducted by the Indigenous Collections Care (ICC) working group, 84% of collections professionals from a range of art, history, archaeology, historic preservation, and university backgrounds said an ICC guide would be highly beneficial to their institution. 

Museums can be places where ancestral connections are reawakened and relationships are built that create space where diverse Indigenous cultures and values are lived, protected, and respected.  The aim of conservation is the preservation of cultural heritage for future generations and should emphasize the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain and strengthen their own cultural traditions. In conclusion, reaching a larger museum audience in the conservation community, the presenters will discuss some of the foundational concepts of the ICC guide's content, and the process of the collaborative review sessions. Attendees will understand the value of culturally appropriate care, how the values expressed in collections and conservation stewardship resonate throughout an entire institution, and a pathway of how to incorporate these values into their daily work.

In recent years, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) at Newfields has reimagined the way it tells stories of the objects in its collection through the production of several open-access, online publications.  

The first of these publications catalogs the 86 paintings in the Clowes Collection, which comprises of a large portion of the Old Master paintings at the IMA. The Clowes Collection was assembled by Dr. G.H. A. Clowes and Edith Clowes in the second half of the 20th century and includes paintings ranging from Rembrandt van Rijn, Juseppe Ribera, Agnolo Gaddi, and Peter Paul Rubens to countless workshop copies and reproductions. A brief catalog was published in 1973 but interest in better understanding this eclectic collection prompted the creation of a large-scale digital catalogue in 2016 that incorporated not only the art historical perspective, but also the technical analysis and conservation histories behind these works.  

The open access, online format of the catalog was designed with the intention of making research more interactive and widely accessible. Art historical entries were largely written by Allen Whitehill Clowes Fellows, early career art historians who had researched works in the collection. When it came to the technical portion of the catalog, conservators worked with software developers in the Newfields Lab to create fully interactive technical entries that paralleled the art historical entries. For many of the works this would mark the first time they were technically imaged and analyzed, developing their rich (and at times known) histories and revealing new information. A radically transparent ethos was adopted sharing fully downloadable technical images of all paintings, during treatment images, scientific analysis, and technical examinations.   

The success of the Clowes catalog prompted the creation of a second catalog of seven paintings by Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien and George as part of a Samuel H. Kress Fellowship in paintings conservation in 2021. This catalog is equally transparent in the dissemination of technical and scientific information. A third digital catalog, featuring the tapestries in the Clowes Collection, is currently underway.  

These projects highlight the importance of collaboration between the conservators, editors, art historians, data architects, and software developers who remain dedicated to creating open access, interactive platforms. While these projects have not been without some challenges and risks, the decision to use an online format to openly share and educate marks a shift away from previous approaches that hoard data under the guise of protecting against misinformation.

The current building of Mount Zion Baptist Church has been an anchor for the Black Community in Athens, Ohio since 1909; while the inception of the congregation dates back to 1872. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the church was in regular use through the 1990’s to the early 2000’s when attendance dwindled. Eventually the congregation disbanded, leaving the building vacant.

In 2013, a group of community members formed the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society (MZBCPS) with the mission of restoring the building to become a Black Cultural Center. Yet, unlike many sacred spaces that have been repurposed without ties to, or recognition of,  past use; this project actively involves its history with a keen eye to the future.

Core to the preservation of the building is current MZBCPS President, Ada-Woodson Adams, who attended the church as a child, is Baptist and was married in the church. Adams is a genealogist, local historian, community organizer and Civil Rights activist. An advocate for historical preservation by recounting oral histories of underrepresented people and places; Ada-Woodson’s involvement has been included in a video documentation series spearheaded by Trevellya “Tee” Ford-Ahmed, PhD.,  Director of Communications and Media of MZBCPS. 

Tee has actively woven Mt. Zion’s significance into current events, such as integrating the series into school curriculum at Ohio University. Highlighting the building preservation as a conduit for discourse about community inequities has drawn the attention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation from which the MZBCPS has received a grant through the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

The grant thrust the efforts of the MZBCPS onto the national preservation stage not only as a recipient of funds; but as an example of how alternate efforts of advocacy can have success. Both Black women have been elevated through allyship by other members of the group - many who are newer to Athens and its history. MZBCPS exemplifies the power of acknowledging primary sources and voices, rather than deferring to parties disconnected to people and place to speak on behalf of a “disenfranchised” group. 

One of the first active conservation projects was a detailed survey of the historic stained glass windows conducted by stained glass conservator (and FAIC Fellow) Ariana Makau, principal conservator of Oakland, California based Nzilani Glass Conservation, (NGC). When it became time for the removal of the windows from the building in order to preserve them while other building elements were addressed, Makau paired with Lindsay Jones, owner and architectural preservation specialist of Blind Eye Restoration and BER’s team, based in Columbus, Ohio. 

The collaboration was more than the sum of its parts with insights shared freely on unusual window sash fabrication and installation (BER), health and safety considerations specific to leaded art glass treatment and removal (NGC) plus ongoing historic context shared by members of the MZBCPS throughout the process. This talk will cover the process of that collaboration, during that phase as well as the ongoing relationship, with highlights of our lessons learned and successes along the way.

The research project Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021 to 2024) funded by the Australian Research Council brought together artists, researchers and museums to discuss the best ways in which to support the choreographer and the museum. Choreographic artworks within the scope of visual arts and museum contexts considers dance as a contemporary art medium, as distinct from contemporary dance presented on the stage.  Collecting, and therefore conserving, choreographic artworks by museums is relatively new, with the first choreographic work collected into a museum was in 2016 with Dance Constructions by Simone Forte acquired by Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Tate acquired its first choreographic artwork three years later in 2019 and now has three choreographic works in its permanent collection. 

The project placed communities of artists, choreographers and performers at its centre, and engaged with artists to commission six new artworks.  Two of the commissioned artists were core researchers throughout the project enabling the exploration of what is needed to conserve such artworks working in partnership with the communities that create, produce and present such artworks.  The exploratory space of research facilitated a level of autonomy and agility to consider new ways of doing between disciplines, institutions and worlds of practice that might not have come together through the usual institutional pathways of acquisition or display.    The presentation reflects on how moving towards a social model of conservation, that places the community centrally, is required. People have always been at the centre of choreographic artworks, and the need to work collaboratively across our practice, building trust, nurturing relationships is critical.  It is these instances of social connection that have enabled choreographic works to materialise and thrive in their future lives.  

A focus in this presentation, beyond the wider research project, is one the commissioned artworks, A Sun Dance by artist Rochelle Haley, also a core researcher in the project.  This work was co-commissioned and presented with the National Gallery of Australia in February 2024.  At the heart of the work is a relation between sunlight, dancer and architecture.  A Sun Dance is a site-harmonising performance made in relation to sunlight streaming through architectural forms, providing a changing ‘set’ for dance over the course of a day.  Documentation strategies, informed through the relational practices across the conservators, performers, archivists, artists, curators and producers formed a key part of the working process for the authors, with engagement and partnership stimulated by both the commission and associated research shifting into practice.  A performance manual was developed alongside the work and tested in a subsequent presentation of A Sun Dance at Tate St Ives in September 2024, further revealing a collaborative approach to the translation and transmission of choreographic artworks in different spaces and contexts.  It also revealed how A Sun Dance is materialised and mobilised through the social connections surrounding it, what holds the work together, and how to preserve what is valued across the networks and relationships of the communities that sustain such works.

In the spring of 2022, Clemson University’s Warren Lasch Conservation Center began a two-year Donnelley Foundation grant in collaboration with the Sol Legare descendant settlement community and the Clemson University Graduate Program in Historic Preservation. Through the conservation of the community’s cultural heritage and training sessions on collections management and emergency preparedness for disasters, the grant’s overarching aim was to encourage and support the community in the sharing of their own history. What resulted was a partnership that enabled both the community and the university organizations to appreciate both the preservation of cultural heritage and its purpose in sharing diverse historic narratives in a more holistic way.




The Sol Legare community is a freedmen settlement community located in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. The community was established after the Civil War by a population of recently emancipated people who had previously cultivated the plantation landscapes located on the sea islands of Sol Legare and James Island. These people purchased former plantation land, established their own thriving and successful farming practices, and cultivated a community of freedmen and descendants whose purpose was to support and serve each other. In the early 20th century, Sol Legare farmers established a fraternal and mutual aid society connected to the International Farmers’ Liberty Union Justice organization. This society supported farmers in purchasing seed for growing crops, provided educational resources, and raised money to cover expenses like funeral costs for community members. Between 1912 - 1915, members funded and constructed the Seashore Farmers’ Lodge No. 767 building, which served as a cultural and economic center for the community and a meeting place for the fraternal organization. The lodge became a symbol within the community as a place of support, refuge, and resilience during the Jim Crow era in South Carolina.




The lodge has retained its original purpose as a meeting space, and now additionally serves as a museum that displays community-donated objects related to the history of the people and landscapes of Sol Legare and James Island. The museum artifacts include farming and agricultural tools from the 19th and 20th centuries, musical instruments used for communication and celebration on the island, and salvaged furniture from community buildings which no longer exist. Additionally, they maintain the original 1912 Lodge charter, as well as other photographs and documents telling the story of the people who lived and worked on the island from the 18th century to the present.




The grant partnership between the Sol Legare community and Clemson University allowed conservators and preservationists to learn from community leaders about the significance of the lodge and its collection. It also allowed for ties to be formed between the tangible artifacts undergoing conservation treatment and the intangible histories behind those objects. In turn, those same community members, after attending the training sessions on collections care and disaster preparedness and recovery, now feel empowered to continue in their roles as caretakers of their own cultural heritage and the narrators of their own history.

This session is an introduction to Your Neighborhood Museum, a social justice organization based in California dedicated to sustainable community-led cultural heritage preservation models. Our mission is to help each other care for our cultural heritage with a focus on under-represented communities and to investigate and address the root causes of inequities in the arts and culture landscape.




We do this by making critical resources such as art conservation, exhibition design, research, technical and administrative support directly available and accessible to those under-resourced and under-recognized by traditional institutions. We leverage our professional skills, networks, and experience to collaborate with artists, culture workers, and communities to develop community-led projects and support communities in reaching their goals. We utilize a mutual aid framework that places value in people and relationships to strengthen our capacity to address community preservation needs.




YNM moves beyond the recognition that the predominant museum model is unsustainable and unethical, and presents a successful alternative model to how cultural heritage preservation efforts and resources can be organized. We will share the conditions and motivations behind the inception of YNM, our methodology for program development, and the values and ethics that guide our vision for the future. We acknowledge, uplift, and build upon previous and continuous efforts made by BIPOC culture workers to create and sustain models that center community needs, talents, and strengths.

The Nunalleq archaeological site is the ancestral home to the people of Quinhagak, Alaska, about 420 miles east and south of Anchorage, on the coast of the Bering Sea. The site consists of a large multi-room dwelling and dates from about 1450 to 1650 AD. It has numerous phases of re-building and modification over the years of occupation, before it was attacked and burned during the “Bow and Arrow Wars”, a period of warfare still remembered in oral histories today. Today’s residents of Quinhagak trace their ancestry to the site and to those who lived and died there. 

Until recently, the site has been amazingly well preserved by permafrost. But like countless others in the north, it is being destroyed by the combined effects of climate change. Since 2009, the Yup'ik village of Quinhagak has teamed with professional archaeologists and conservators with two primary goals: to rescue as many artifacts as possible and to train local community members in caring for their own history. To date, over 100,000 artifacts have been excavated, racing against winter storms and thawing permafrost, while also engaging younger generations to care for their own heritage. Today, the culture center cares for the largest collection of Yup’ik heritage made prior to Euro-American contact. 

For the past seven years, the Anchorage Museum has partnered with Qanirtuuq, Nalaquq, and the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak to support their heritage and culture work. Quinhagak Heritage Inc. (QHI) operates the cultural center, and Nalaquq coordinates the archaeological work each season. During the first 10 years, all of the artifacts were sent overseas to the University of Aberdeen (one of their partners) to be conserved. Since 2019, with Anchorage Museum collaboration, QHI and Anchorage Museum are helping keep the newly excavated artifacts in Alaska and preserve them locally, while also training members of their community to do this work. 

Museums are slow to change. If museums and the conservation field are to remain relevant, supported, and viable, we must reexamine our practices. The legacy of taking cultural belongings from communities cannot be ignored. Whether we have contributed to them or not, we have benefited from these colonial systems. Radical actions may be needed to affect change. Only through working closely with communities, and ensuring the control lies with those who have previously been ignored, will we be able to ethically preserve and steward collections. The collaboration between the village of Quinhagak and its many partners is a model for the future of conservation.

Solely focusing on Western Care for an Ethnographic Collection can be detrimental for the Relatives’ Belongings housed therein. 

The oldest belongings in Native American ethnographic collections are meant to be in use. These belongings, collected during a time when Native people were transitioning to a sedentary and oppressive life on reservations, were often traded for Western supplies required for survival in a new settler-colonial world.  

Much thought and intention went into the making of these Relatives’ Belongings. Designs and color choices unique to the tribal nation were chosen specifically for the wearer. 

With intention and thought embedded in the materials, the connection between the maker, the wearer, and the land is made. As most Native people believe that they are part of the land and the Earth is their mother/grandmother, this connection is representative of that relationship, that kinship.

Traditional care most often includes smudging (using medicinal plants important to Native people and gathered directly from the land) and feeding (sharing food and nourishment at community gatherings with relatives and with the Relatives’ Belongings, symbolically). 

In an active collection, community member visits add to the spiritual and physical care of a collection. Community members, relatives, will often sit with, talk with, and cry with their Relatives’ Belongings in a collection. They are allowed to hold their Relatives’ Belongings without gloves as a barrier. This contact with the Belonging creates connection. 

We have a partnership between the anthropology, facilities, safety, and collections stewardship departments to practice traditional care, including smudging in collections storage and reviewing historical pesticide treatments of Relatives’ Belongings.

Community members assist the Science Museum of Minnesota with the care of their Relatives’ Belongings. By including community members in the museum’s stewardship efforts, this museum and their collections staff are putting in work towards reparative actions. The museum does not own these Relatives’ Belongings. By acknowledging this fact, and speaking it aloud, the museum, more specifically the staff, can find common ground with community members. Most Native people are governed by values that they strive to meet in their everyday lives. With humility being a commonly held virtue, staff members practicing this belief does a tiny amount of bridging and acknowledges the very colonial nature of collecting institutions like museums. Traditional care of an Ethnographic collection challenges Western ideas of ownership and can minutely encourage shifts in perspective within museum culture. 

Traditional care is about access and honoring kinship.

Gu Dexin, a radical pioneer of contemporary Chinese art, retired from the art world after his last solo exhibition in 2009. He is recognized for his large-scale installations that explore decay, transformation, and impermanence. Using perishable materials such as raw animal flesh and adipose tissues, pig brains, fresh flowers, fruit, and plastics, his works evoke strong sensory experiences, characterized by intense odors and continual material degradation.

This contribution presents a two-year conservation project focused on 2000-04-11, an installation created by Gu for the controversial Fuck Off exhibition held in Shanghai in 2000, featuring works by 48 avant-garde artists. The work entered the M+ collection in 2013 without any historical documentation. It consists of a chair filled with visceral pork fat displayed on a vermillion-colored carpet runner, with a framed vermillion-colored wall section opposite the chair. Viewers are invited to sit in the chair, experiencing the decomposing fat while contemplating the framed red plane.

Ephemerality, material transition, and decomposition are central themes in Gu’s practice. His works often deteriorate or transform during exhibitions, sometimes provoking reactions to the smell of rotting substances. Presenting 2000-04-11 in a museum context posed unique challenges due to the lack of artist involvement, limited information about the piece’s creation, and the potential risks of infestation and unpleasant odors in gallery spaces. To address these issues, the conservation team conducted historical and material research and testing and consulted with Gu's assistant and others familiar with the work. We also monitored the microbiota changes in sealed pork fat to faithfully recreate the sensory experience of the piece while ensuring the safe display of the work.

Despite the absence of written instructions for reinstalling the piece, the team's approach honors Gu's conceptual legacy while adapting the work to its new museum setting. The lack of documentation is attributed to the commercialization and exploitation of the artist’s work. This presentation explores the collaborative efforts made to exhibit 2000-04-11 in Gu’s absence, the risks associated with recreating the experience, and the multiple voices that contributed to presenting and documenting this installation.

From its inception, the conservation of paintings has been a fundamental concern of The Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Its two principal conservators, Stephen Pichetto (1887-1949) and Mario Modestini (1907-2006), not only established standards for the treatment of the collection but played a vital role in every aspect of the Foundation’s activities. In keeping with this tradition, The Kress Program in Paintings Conservation (hereafter KPPC) at New York University's Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts was inaugurated in 1989 with support from the Foundation, implementing two of its key commitments: conservation treatment and technical study of paintings from the dispersed Kress Collection in collaboration with museums and individual locations that do not have an in-house department, while simultaneously training graduate art conservation students. Recently, recognizing a shared commitment to open access, the two institutions embarked on a joint project to create interconnected websites, bringing an exceptional amount of collection and conservation data into public view. The result represents a paradigm shift in the digital presentation of conservation research.




For 35 years, the KPPC has accumulated treatment reports, conservation and technical images, paint analyses, and art historical research for over 280 Kress paintings. Previous dissemination efforts through NYU's website (e.g., blogs, PDFs) proved unsustainable and lacked a coherent structure that would provide a systematic resource for the field. The Foundation’s website, while functional, was outdated and lacked adequate resources to showcase the vast collection or reflect its commitment to digital art history. In response to the joint need for a more robust framework for dynamic content display, the institutions took the unprecedented step to share resources and develop their digital platforms simultaneously.




Working with C&G Partners and BMM Art&Computer, input was culled from conservators, curators, archivists, scholars, and educators. This approach ensured both websites would meet diverse users' needs. Shared visual branding provided unity, while a flexible framework accommodated each institution's specific requirements. The development involved designing the websites in parallel, allowing for shared features and enhanced functionalities that might not have been achieved independently.




The Kress Conservation website’s digital catalogue entries uniquely position conservation data as primary content rather than supporting material. They feature powerful IIIF-based digital viewers with "curtain view" functionality, enabling users to study various technical images (X-ray, IRR, cleaned-state treatment photos) in full resolution. Flexible visual galleries and content layouts accommodate diverse data and illustrated entries ranging from 500 to 10,000+ words. This "living" platform allows continuous updates, ensuring sustainable dissemination of conservation research. The Kress Foundation site benefited from these features, which enhanced the display of its entire collection of artworks. Conversely, features designed for the Foundation (e.g., collection database, comprehensive search functions, interactive maps, detailed filters, publications and news pages) were repurposed by the KPPC to publish in-house papers, talks, and conservation resources.




These interconnected platforms fulfill the Kress Foundation and the KPPC’s longtime shared commitment to open-access. The two websites will grow in tandem, adapting to the evolving needs of the art history and conservation communities, ensuring the Kress Collection's legacy remains vibrant and accessible for the future.




Note: The Foundation (http://www.kressfoundation.org/) and Conservation websites (http://www.kressconservation.org/) went live in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

The Los Angeles County’s Civic Art collection is comprised of over 600 contemporary and historic permanent public artworks located across County-owned property. These artworks are cultural assets that belong to and are enjoyed by all Los Angeles County residents. In recent efforts to provide equitable resources through the Civic Art Division’s commissions and programming, community engagement has been a focused goal. Artists are required to provide activities and feedback from community when fabricating a new artwork, ensuring that the artwork is truly representative of the communities where it resides. The natural extension to this work is to continue the engagement throughout the lifetime of the artwork, through artist activities, educational curriculum, and conservation projects. 

One of the collection’s most treasured artworks, Paul Botello’s Inner Resources mural, was created in 2000 at City Terrace Park. The artwork is one of the largest murals in Los Angeles and is the most often referenced of Botello’s works. Because of the mural’s significance to the community, the mural’s conservation was an ideal opportunity to support the growth of developing conservators and public artists from the surrounding City Terrace and East Los Angeles communities. The Civic Art Division released an open call for the Inner Resources Mural Conservation Apprenticeship Project in Winter 2023 for those interested or emerging in the conservation field and emerging public artists who have a connection or investment in the City Terrace and East Los Angeles communities. The open call provided a rare and paid opportunity to learn about the importance of preservation and participate in the conservation of a significant artwork in their community. 

Four artist apprentices and two emerging conservators were selected by a diverse panel of conservators, cultural workers, and the artist Paul Botello. Work began in Spring 2024 under the supervision of Site & Studio Conservation, led by Kiernan Graves and supported by a team of conservation professionals. The apprentices were given extensive training on identification and examination of condition phenomena and artist materials, agents of deterioration and risks to murals, conservation treatment skills, technical photography/documentation, and an introduction to analytical techniques. The artist Paul Botello worked on the larger areas of loss and mentored the apprentices about his artistic process giving the artists the opportunity to incorporate skills required for restoration.

Public artworks, and especially murals in the East Los Angeles community, provide inspiration, acting as both beautifier, educator, and witness. Communities like East Los Angeles, at the risk of displacement and gentrification greatly benefit from the investment in conservation, as one perceives the erasure of the visual stories of the artists and artworks as the erasure of the communities themselves. When community participates in the conservation of artworks that hold value to their culture and ancestral pasts, it creates an exchange of passion and appreciation for the artworks' meaning and preservation for the conservators, the participants, all that witness the conservation in action, and all who live in the community with an artwork that is cared for. The Civic Art Division hopes to continue this apprenticeship model that centers community knowledge and leadership for future conservation projects, as the response through this project amplifies the need for the conservation field to engage with communities, not as our presumed role as teacher, but as collaborator.

The US Navy Submarine Force Museum (SFM) and Historic Ship Nautilus (SSN 571) is the only museum in the United States where nuclear-trained US Navy Submarine Sailors and museum professionals have the opportunity to work together to care for a museum collection. Collections staff gain daily access to the foremost subject matter experts and cultural stakeholders of the collection, as well as exclusive insight into Sailors’ lives onboard submarines. Meanwhile our Sailors discover unique skills and a knowledge base they would otherwise not encounter in their Navy careers. Over time, this relationship has proven mutually beneficial, but it wasn’t always that way.  

Our presentation charts the evolution of this collaborative relationship via the trials and triumphs of our ongoing 100% collection inventory. Previously, civilian and military staff operated in isolation from each other. This changed in 2021 when Sailors volunteered to serve as liaisons between the civilian staff and the military command to ensure programming and collections work continued in the event of civilian furloughs. As our Sailors’ interest in museum work grew, we trained them on basic collections care and incorporated them into our inventory teams. Their extensive knowledge and “Sailor power” were welcome additions to the moving and processing of both large quantities of artifacts and just plain large artifacts. It is now a full-fledged collaboration that includes Sailors in artifact handling, conservation, exhibit planning, and programming. As the Sailors work with collections staff, their investment and pride in caring for the museum has grown, using their positions to streamline collections care and facilities management. Having a crew of thirty highly-trained and physically-fit Sailors as first responders to a collections’ emergency (e.g. fire, leaks, or loss of electrical power) takes a significant burden off the collections team. The Sailors are also the primary force behind maintaining and preserving SFM's most priceless artifact – Historic Ship Nautilus herself, the world’s first nuclear submarine and the only US Navy nuclear submarine available for public touring.  

The tangible benefits of collaboration have been invaluable to improving SFM in predictable ways, but what we never anticipated was our Sailors truly investing in learning how to better preserve their own heritage. We all have continued to grow and learn about the traditions, missions, and occasionally embellished history – “sea stories” – that make the US Navy Submarine Force a one-of-a-kind community. This is only a temporary duty in these Sailors’ careers, but they take this unique knowledge and skillset with them, applying it to other facets of their lives, whether at follow-on duties assisting with other heritage assets within the US Navy or in a volunteer capacity as civilians. This inventory has fostered skills and relationships that extend beyond the walls of SFM. This presentation is our chance to share our experiences, pass on our lessons, and spin our very own sea story. Or two.

A sizable collection of approximately three hundred Southwest Pueblo wooden figures (often erroneously referred to as “Kachina dolls”) were in a donation to start a Cultural Center – Museum. The figures are organic with wood, fur and feathers. Native Americans and conservators’ beliefs often differ drastically on what a collection piece is and how to treat the piece. The dilemma of the opposing views is visited in this abstract.

Many Indigenous Peoples believe everything has an animistic life force with a life cycle that ends in decay to then start another life cycle. The degree of life energy depends on various factors. Some of the most powerful animate sources are man-made entities made from re-purposed once living organic materials.

Conservation best practices when faced with a fragile fur and feathers collection that are susceptible to agents of deterioration, is to keep them in the dark in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment. Creating an securely enclosed mini-environment box that is light and humidity free, airtight boxes made of archival materials that buffer any extreme fluctuations in temperature or relative humidity would be ideal to preserve these figures. Yet, living animistic creatures want to stand upright, breathe, need light, and do not wish to be alone. The containers could not be regular boxes.

A solution of compromise resulted in the design of Culturally Sensitive Archival Containers.

The containers use all archival materials. Blue board is used to make a three-sided box and cover. UV restricting acrylic thermoplastic creates the front side permitting the entrance of light while restricting harmful light waves. There are breathe holes cut in the sides which are covered with unbleached cotton linen so pests and surrounding environmental factors are deterred. Two-inch plank Etha foam with Tyvek support the figures so they can securely stand and each container has two or more figures so they are not alone.

The container’s design considers the benefits of a mini-environment away from harmful light, pests, and other agents of deterioration while still considering the aspects of a living entity being able to breath in the light and not be alone. While both sides of this discussion compromise in the creation of these containers, the result is a good middle ground.

This journey brought an understanding of the pieces, their energy, and their care from a Native American’s view point while still accommodating the conservator’s ethics of good stewardship in combating the agents of deterioration. As we move forward in collection care, we must learn to listen and communicate. Both sides need to understand and accommodate views different than our own. These containers promote understanding between cultures and ideals. Most Native Americans are open to conservation practices if presented in terms of respect. In preserving collections conservators and stewards can give respect by listening. Maybe you too, will feel and hear the voice of the inanimate thing.

The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library (NYPL) are advancing climate action in collections contexts through improved collaboration, application of materials science, and communicating with internal and external peers. 

The NYPL Research Libraries includes three historic research centers: the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (1911) at 42nd Street, the Library for the Performing Arts (1965) at Lincoln Center, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (1905, 1979) in Harlem. They are three very different buildings given their construction, mechanical HVAC systems, and building envelopes. As a library, NYPL has centered access to information in its mission for over 125 years. Access is strengthened by a coordinated infrastructure of preservation and operations activities including management of storeroom environments, maintenance of well-designed drainage systems, conscientious exhibition planning, careful transport, routinely performed housekeeping, and so forth. Preservation is the job of a great variety of people working in synchrony within and with NYPL. 

But, for decades, preservation and registration contexts have centered on stringent adherence to legacy setpoints interpreted from works by Garry Thomson. Most people in collections preservation work have had at least one confrontation about achieving an appropriate environment within storerooms and exhibitions, resulting in chagrin, remorse, and sometimes outrage. Increasingly, we see a new future as many of us realize that preservation and the planet are not served well by static set points, but through more active, ongoing, and collaborative exchange and experimentation. 

This presentation will review how that change has been occurring at NYPL. It begins with the establishment of the NYPL Collection Management program in 2016, its participation in the Getty Conservation Institute Managing Collection Environment’s program in 2017, reviving an improved environmental monitoring strategy and adopting wider seasonal environmental parameters in 2018, the hiring of NYPL’s first energy management team in 2021, and education of staff about new preservation environment goals. We will discuss managing issues with challenging exhibition spaces in our historic structures, including communications with staff and potential lenders about areas lacking mechanical HVAC. This talk will specifically highlight learning from our facilities and capital planning teams, working together, and strategizing how to make NYPL preservation strategies more sustainable.

Today, many organizations are striving to be more sustainable. The reasons can range from a desire to align with sustainable development goals defined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, or to reduce an institution’s carbon footprint. Regardless of the reason, institutions around the world are implementing energy saving strategies to reach these goals. For some, the implementation of these strategies is a resounding success. For others, multiple unforeseen dead ends or problems impede implementation rollout or stop it altogether.

Implementation successes and challenges vary from organization to organization, as and vary internally within an institution. The problems can range from internal disputes to administration priorities. Some institutions do not know what steps to take when a project begins to go off track. Others may have set high expectations for the results of the implemented strategy and though the strategy is successful, they desired better results and consider the project a failure. n

Over the last 12 years we have worked with over 70 collecting institutions of all kinds to help them implement energy saving strategies. During that time, we have worked with a number of organizations that have successfully implemented energy saving strategies and some that, though they tried hard, were not able to successfully implement any energy saving strategies. Every institution faced hurdles of some kind during the course of their project, either internal or external. In some case the hurdles were easy to overcome and in other cases they significantly impacted the project.

This presentation will provide some examples of institutions across the spectrum of libraries, museums, and archives that we have worked with over the last 12 years. It will identify some of the major successes they experienced, as well as lend insight into less successful situations. The presentation will recognize the factors in each of these cases that led to success, including significant energy and/or carbon reduction. It will also examine the hurdles that institutions faced that caused the project to stall and, in some instances, stop all together. At the conclusion of the presentation, attendees will have a better understanding of some of the major factors that can impact the implementation of sustainable strategies at an organization and best practices for navigating these challenges, or avoiding them altogether.

This presentation explores the challenges associated with loaning objects from institutions that stipulate stricter environmental controls than those typically maintained by the borrowing institution, particularly in the context of increasing sustainability efforts.  The Postal Museum (TPM) in London, is aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2040, part of this is by becoming more flexible in its approach in controlling conditions, however doing this has highlighted the difficulties of balancing the needs of the collections, the desire to borrow objects and the desire to become more sustainable.

TPM, being a medium sized museum, has the ability to make decisions readily within a small Collections team.  Currently it has been trialling the reduction of plant use to control environmental conditions and has altered its temperature and humidity parameters allowing more flexibility, but without compromising care of the objects it looks after.  We are aware that larger institutions may not have the ability to make changes quite so freely.  Sustainability and reducing energy consumption is not new within the conservation sector and it seems to be the general consensus that changes should be made, however, how much of this is actually becoming a reality?

We will discuss recent case studies in which both the borrowing and lending institutions' requirement specifications varied.  TPM aims to be as flexible as possible when lending items, looking at several measures to off-set both risks to the objects as well as helping to reduce costs and energy use.  This includes minimal use of couriers, especially when the borrowing institution have qualified collection care staff on hand, to the re-use of mounts and being practical about the conditions.  Obviously, each loan is different, and measures will be determined on a case by case basis.

We would like to generate a discussion about how museums can work together better to mitigate these issues by employing alternative conservation strategies, as well as ways to get everyone working to the same standards.  The audience will be encouraged to discuss similar situations they have encountered, any negotiations held and solutions reached.  In our experience, it has been the larger institutions that have been less flexible in their requirements.  Discussions will be raised regarding how the size of the institution affects the process; are larger institutions being hampered by the organisation structure and decision-making process? Do larger institutions want to change their criteria? Or is it that Conservators working in larger institutions are less flexible due to focusing on their own area?

Obviously, there are caveats and specific examples can be found where strict controls are absolutely necessary, but in today's world it is interesting to explore what more can be done to mitigate this.

This presentation aims to contribute to the broader conversations within the museum community about how the museum sector can evolve to meet the dual goals of conservation and sustainability, ensuring the loaning of objects continues to be a viable practice.