AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

Registration required - add this session to your Annual Meeting registration
Free; maximum 50 registrants

In mentorship, storytelling is used as a means for relating to others to understand experiences and relationship building. Humans use storytelling to engage, teach lessons and share impact to influence change in hopes to relate and resonate with their audience. In a mentor/mentee relationship there is specific care that mentors must exercise to include the many identities a mentee can wear that influences how conservation professionals navigate complex career paths.

This interactive workshop will explore how mentors and mentees can interrogate the stories they tell themselves that interrupt building connections across differences and learn to ask questions that support growth and resilience in the workplace. This workshop will support mentors and mentees in communicating what stories they may be telling themselves about supporting and receiving support from those with different identities, how to interrupt those stories and how to co-create between mentor and mentee to develop relationships that are impactful and inspiring, with the goal of creating psychological safety and dignity within the profession to usher in a more racially diverse group of people.

Mentorship is an integral part of career growth, development, and retention. This workshop is part of FAIC’s Inclusive Mentorship series, which is organized by AIC's Education and Training Committee, and aims to create foundational opportunities to develop and inspire inclusive mentors and culture change. Culture change is a critical undertaking for organizations seeking to thrive in an ever-evolving world.

• $35 registration fee
• Adding this event to your schedule does not guarantee you a space. You must add it to your registration via the above "Add to Registration" button.
  
  

The work of art, architectural and archeological conservators is frequently covered in commercial media like The New Yorker, Atlantic, New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Yet only a handful of conservators have been actively writing our stories for general audiences. That is changing now, and this panel aims to show some of the strategies that some practitioners are using to communicate our ideas. The goal of such writing is to bring visibility to our profession and to ensure that what is told about us is accurate as well as interesting. In popular media we tend to be depicted as either basement-dwelling nitpickers or Indiana Jones style swashbucklers.  But the true elegance of our work, the mindset that goes into our commitments to doing no harm and protecting work for the future, as well as how our approach to repair can be a metaphor for other ways to live in the world, is rarely seen in writing about conservation done by others. This panel will present stories and techniques that promote conservation to a range of general audiences. Each panelist will describe their goals and approach to writing, providing examples. Then we will open it to the audience for conversation and discussion. The goal of the panel is to spur our community to more writing and more communication with the world at large.

• $35 registration fee
• Adding this event to your schedule does not guarantee you a space. You must add it to your registration via the above "Add to Registration" button.

Art conservation is a field filled with ambiguity, where often there is no single “right” answer to a conservation challenge. This uncertainty can be both frustrating and liberating, especially for students and emerging professionals who are accustomed to clear-cut solutions. In this interactive session, we will explore the role of uncertainty in conservation and how it can be leveraged to foster creativity, critical thinking, and resilience among early-career professionals.

Drawing from my own experiences as a conservator and educator at the University of Delaware, I have observed that many students struggle with the concept of "it depends"—the idea that conservation solutions are rarely definitive and often require careful consideration of context, materials, and ethical implications. This session will feature a collaborative dialogue between myself, current undergraduate and graduate students, recent graduates, and board members from the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN). Together, we will share insights and strategies for embracing uncertainty as a valuable aspect of the conservation process and provide reassurance that this feeling is universal, sharing helpful coping mechanisms.

The session will begin with brief presentations from me, students, and recent graduates on their personal experiences with uncertainty in their academic and early professional journeys. These presentations will highlight the challenges they faced and the strategies they developed to navigate the lack of clear answers in conservation practice. Following these presentations, we will break into smaller discussion groups, ideally with a mix of conservators in different career stages, each facilitated by a panelist, to delve deeper into specific topics such as decision-making in treatment proposals, the role of collaboration in managing uncertainty, and the ways in which educators can support students in developing confidence amidst ambiguity.

The goal of this session is to create an open and supportive environment where participants can exchange ideas, share personal experiences, and develop a toolkit for navigating the uncertainties inherent in art conservation. By the end of the session, participants will have gained new perspectives on how to approach uncertainty not as a hindrance but as an opportunity for growth and innovation.

This collaborative session aims to provide a platform for emerging conservation professionals to connect, learn from one another, and build a community that embraces the complexities of our field. In doing so, we hope to inspire a shift in how uncertainty is perceived—transforming it from a source of anxiety into a catalyst for creativity and professional development.