Washington, DC — April 27, 2015 — Throughout its 33-year history, first as the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property and then under its current name, Heritage Preservation has fulfilled its mission to preserve the nation’s heritage for future generations through innovative leadership and educational agendas. It has steadily advocated for the protection of cultural heritage by creating programs, publications, and easily accessed products that advance the field of conservation and serve the needs of allied preservation professions.
Heritage Preservation’s programs have been tested and proven. Hence, they are trusted and highly valued. Their loss would be severely felt throughout the cultural heritage community. Research undertaken over the past six months indicates that several synergies exist between the programs of the DC-based Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) and Heritage Preservation. For this reason, following the recent vote by Heritage Preservation members approving its dissolution as of June 30, 2015, several popular Heritage Preservation programs will transition to FAIC, thus ensuring their continuation.
Programs That Will Move to FAIC
FAIC will administer and lead three primary emergency planning, preparedness, and response programs currently offered by Heritage Preservation: Alliance for Response (AFR), State Heritage Emergency Partnership (SHEP), and Risk Evaluation and Planning Program (REPP). FAIC will also promote the annual MayDay campaign in 2015 and into the future. Heritage Preservation’s plan to develop an app called the Disaster Assessment Reporting Tool (DART) is on hold until funding is obtained to develop a prototype.
Transfer of the Connecting to Collections (C2C) Online Community program, and other activities related to the statewide preservation planning and implementation program developed and funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), with programmatic assistance from Heritage Preservation, began in December 2014, and has been fully implemented as C2C Care.
FAIC is in the process of hiring additional programmatic and support staff, as well as part-time contractors, to ensure that former Heritage Preservation activities will thrive. Four key Heritage Preservation staff members will be retained, allowing uninterrupted access to their expertise.
Heritage Preservation’s joint award with the College Art Association was presented in February 2015 in New York City. The College Art Association and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) have agreed to form a partnership in time for the 2016 award. It is hoped that a new organizational arrangement for the joint Heritage Preservation/AIC Ross Merrill Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and Care of Collections can be announced prior to the 2016 award cycle.
Although FAIC will not directly oversee Heritage Preservation’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! and Rescue Public Murals programs, existing digital materials from these and other initiatives will be hosted on FAIC’s Conservation OnLine (CoOL) website to ensure continued access.
The Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Campbell Center, the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, the Washington Conservation Guild, the University of Maryland Archives, Conservation Resources Management, and the George Washington University Libraries graciously agreed to accept library and archival materials so that they may continue to be put to good use.
After April 30, 2015, the Heritage Preservation Board of Directors will:
- donate the intellectual property rights for the name and logo of Heritage Preservation to FAIC;
- transfer copyrights and inventory of all Heritage Preservation publications and products to FAIC so that these important resources can continue to be distributed;
- work with FAIC to arrange for mail, product sales, and the website URLs to be redirected to FAIC;
- and allocate all unencumbered monies and transfer unspent funds, as appropriate, to FAIC when the closure of Heritage Preservation is completed.
Other Key Heritage Preservation Programs
The completion and successful delivery of Heritage Health Information 2014, funded by an IMLS grant award with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Getty Foundation, and others, will continue to be Heritage Preservation’s principal activity for the first half of 2015, with results tabulated and disseminated to the cultural heritage community by summer 2015.
The IMLS Conservation Assessment Program (CAP), managed by Heritage Preservation, will close on April 30, 2015. Further information about this program can be found at www.imls.gov.
Plans are underway to place the Heritage Emergency National Task Force, of which FAIC is an active member, under the jurisdiction of a federal agency.
Additional Information
Questions or comments regarding the status of Heritage Preservation programs may be directed to Tom Clareson, Acting President, Heritage Preservation (tclareson@heritagepreservation.org), or Eryl Wentworth, Executive Director, Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation (ewentworth@conservation-us.org).
To download the announcement, please go to http://www.conservation-us.org/about-us/press-room/hp-release