ANAGPIC Welcomes Big Changes
The Association of North American Graduate Programs in Conservation (ANAGPIC) is welcoming some big changes.
ANAGPIC evolved out of a series of meetings and, in 1974, began to enable resource sharing and exchange of ideas between students and faculty from North American graduate programs in conservation of art and cultural heritage. Since 1976, meetings have been held at each of the member programs’ cities, and have included lab tours, student presentations, and time for socializing. From 1997 through 2007, host programs printed the student paper abstracts; rare copies of these can be located on Worldcat. Since 2005, student papers and posters have been made publicly available to researchers on the website: https://resources.culturalheritage.org/anagpic-student-papers/, originally hosted by the University of Texas, and now supported by member programs and maintained by AIC.
As ANAGPIC has grown, so have the meetings, with close to 200 attendees each year. While we all love to meet in person, tour labs, and hug our new and old friends, these meetings are both time-consuming and expensive for the graduate programs. In addition to costs for students, faculty, and hosts, ANAGPIC members were also paying annual dues to support keynote speakers, website maintenance, and occasional program-wide enrichments. While these, too, have been valued parts of our shared culture, meeting costs limit the ability of ANAGPIC to be inclusive, and even the collection of dues and making payments for services require resources. Recent changes are designed to meet these evolving needs.
Starting in 2025 and continuing until further notice, ANAGPIC annual meetings will be held virtually, and member organizational dues are being suspended. Passed with overwhelming support by ANAGPIC leadership, we all believe that COVID has made us smarter about the potential for virtual meetings, including break-out rooms for networking, keynote speakers from anywhere in the world, and even interactive virtual lab tours. Virtual meetings will allow other programs from across North America to participate more easily and will allow each university to utilize local resources to support hosting this significant educational opportunity.
The leadership of ANAGPIC, including chairs and faculty from each of the member programs, has long sought to be more representative of all graduate conservation education in North America. In this spirit of increased participation, ANAGPIC recently welcomed two new participating programs:
- The Escuela Nacional de Conservación Restauración y Museografía — Manuel del Castillo Negrete (National School of Conservation, Restoration, and Museography – ENCRyM) in Mexico City.
- The Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice MA at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC (FIT).
This brings our membership up to ten programs!
As ANAGPIC membership increases and our meetings become virtual, each host will develop their own methods of hosting virtual conferences. We are embracing these challenges, and the new format will be launched in 2025, hosted by Queen’s University.
It has been a pleasure to work with beloved colleagues and students over the years as President of ANAGPIC. Effective July 1, 2024, ANAGPIC welcomes Associate Professor Patricia Smithen from Queen’s University into this role.
—Professor Ellen Pearlstein, Outgoing ANAGPIC President, Professor, UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage
History
ANAGPIC was founded in May 1984 by the following organizations:
Buffalo State College, State University of New York, Art Conservation Department;
Harvard University Art Museums, Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies;
New York University, Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts;
Queen’s University, Art Conservation Program;
Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation;
The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information, Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record
Since its inception, ANAGPIC has held annual conferences to provide students from member programs the opportunity to present current research to their peers. One of the primary functions of this website is to present these conference papers so that conservation and preservation colleagues may benefit from them.
North American Graduate Programs in the Conservation of Cultural Property: Histories and Alumni (originally published in 2000)