AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation
Dr Giorgio Torraca, former Deputy Director of ICCROM and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Rome, ‘La Sapienza’ died on September 25, 2010. Dr. Torraca’s contributions include research, publications, teaching and leadership of several major preservation organizations. Read his obituary on the ICCROM website
ECPN Minutes – September 24, 2010 1 PM EST, conference call
On Call:
Ryan Winfield
Heather Brown
Rose Daly
1. New Committee Members, committee position descriptions
2. AIC Website, ECPN blog updates
3. Twitter, Facebook, Ning updates
4. Outreach: ECPN poster at the AIC 2011 meeting, podcasts, AIC outreach lecture, local outreach, flier, upcoming meetings to be attended by ECPN committee members.
5. Angels Project
6. Mentoring Project
1. New Committee Members
Welcome to Heather Brown and Amy Brost! Heather will take over the position of Outreach coordinator from Jason Church and Amy will take over the communications coordinator position from Katie Mullen. Thanks to Jason and Katie for all your hard work and dedication to ECPN. I encourage Heather and Amy to keep a general file of meeting minutes and their projects to pass along to future committee members.
2. AIC Website, ECPN blog updates
Since finding jobs and internships are so important to emerging members, the ECPN will look over the career center of the AIC website and suggest content that could be added, especially in the “Becoming a Conservator” section. During the call we discussed specifically having topics like: resumes and C.V.’s, Portfolios, “Top 10 things a pre-program intern should know” (this would be great to partner with the Education and Training committee), Documentation, the ECPN mentoring program, research ideas, and maybe a list of links to helpful websites, blogs, etc. Amy Brost has also sent out a list of links, to be added to the ECPN blog, but perhaps also the webpage. A survey of conservators was also suggested to ask what supervisors look for in a C.V., and their expectations for pre-program interns, graduate fellows, and post-graduate fellows.
Ryan is looking into a Google calendar for the webpage, and perhaps importing the blog to Facebook so updates on the blog are automatically posted on Facebook. Ryan is working with Membership to list pre-program supervisors on the AIC “Find a Conservator” search function.
3. Twitter – Rose has de-activated the account, Facebook – Rose and Ryan are Admins, Heather Brown was just made an Admin – Would Jason Church and Katie Mullen like to continue to be administrators? Ning was de-activated by Ryan.
4. Outreach: A poster at the AIC 2011 meeting will be proposed, deadline is October 1st – Heather and Rose will work on it. Podcasts of the outreach lecture are being planned, we are still brainstorming for a speaker to record, and a microphone would be needed, Rose mentioned purchasing one personally that she would be willing to allow other ECPN members to use. Heather is attending MAAM Oct 25, (http://www.midatlanticmuseums.org/) and hopefully she can bring some fliers about ECPN, Rose will be sending the flier to Amy and Heather for editing, Rose is attending MRCG November 12 (http://mrcg.wik.is/) and she can look for interested future ECPN members or collaborations with MRCG.
5. Angels Project: Heather will be contacting Ruth about the Angels project at the AIC 2011 meeting.
6. Mentoring Project: Heather and Ryan will be working together on the mentoring project, Heather may be posting a testimonial from a successful mentee on the ECPN blog, and possibly the AIC webpage as well.
Next call will be Oct. 21, 2010.
Good meeting, very fast, and there is a lot to follow-up about, look for e-mails from Rose soon.
To my fellow AIC members:
You may, or may not know that I am a board member of the College Art Association, a role Joyce Hill Stoner held before me. In fact I currently serve as Vice President for External Relations; that means I’m a conduit for feedback from membership (which I welcome) as well as responsible for raising funds for the association.
I’d like you to consider joining CAA (which can be done at https://services.collegeart.or…e.aspx?Webcode=JOINCAA. I realize you likely have memberships in several professional associations, but CAA is the only one which serves the entire community of visual arts professionals. AIC is a CAA Affiliate which means there should be significant numbers of AIC members who are also CAA members. But it is more that an obligation; I think that when art topics are discussed it is important that conservators’ and conservation scientists’ voices be heard. I can be said to represent conservators on the board and I am known as an art historian who’s a “friend of conservators” (as Ann Hoenigswald introduced me at an IIC meeting some years ago); but more conservators need to be involved.
In 2002 I initiated a series of workshops at the CAA annual meeting under the auspices of AIC and Rebecca Rushfield is continuing them. Held in museum galleries in front of actual objects (at a conference otherwise using only slides and Powerpoint images), art historians, curators, conservators and artists discuss questions of mutual interest, each bringing different points of view and expertise. Occasions such as these are significant ways for conservators to demonstrate the importance of their contributions beyond their work in the labs.
I am one of the very few art historians who is an AIC member (assuming a role that Charles Rhyne held, and splendidly, for many years), so I strongly believe in involvement across disciplines. I do hope you’ll consider joining me and 14,000 others, as members of CAA.
Andrea Kirsh