On behalf of the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN), I’m pleased to introduce our upcoming webinar, “Picking up the Pieces: Accepting, Preventing, and Learning from Mistakes as an Emerging Conservation Professional,” taking place on Friday, April 7th from 12-1 pm EST.
Pressure to avoid mistakes, particularly during treatment, can hamper discussion within the field of conservation regarding how to actively prevent and recover from setbacks. Although it is unfortunate when they occur, acknowledging that mistakes are fundamental to learning can be especially crucial to the development of early-career professionals. This webinar aims to provide a greater understanding of the most common causes of errors, tips for minimizing the probability of mistakes, and strategies for dealing with setbacks.
ECPN has invited a panel of four speakers to explore this topic: Michele Marincola, Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Conservation of the Conservation Center at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Tony Sigel, Senior Conservator of Objects and Sculpture at the Straus Center for Conservation, Harvard Art Museums; Ayesha Fuentes, PhD candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and Geneva Griswold, Associate Objects Conservator at the Seattle Art Museum.
Attendance is free and open to all AIC members. Please register here to watch the webinar. If you are unable to view the program on April 7th, or are not a member of AIC, the full video will be recorded and uploaded onto the AIC YouTube Channel.
ECPN would like to increase transparency regarding mistakes and inspire a broader dialogue on this subject in the field. We want to hear from YOU with your stories of mistakes and setbacks! Please take this short survey describing your experiences. You can be a conservation professional from any career stage, and you may opt to remain anonymous. With your permission, we will be sharing select experiences during the webinar and in a follow up discussion on AIC’s Blog Conservators Converse.
We hope you will join us for the webinar on April 7th and that our viewers will gain a new appreciation of mistakes as fundamental to learning, an increased awareness of the sources of error, and practical strategies for avoiding mistakes.
Please see the below biographies to learn more about our speakers:
MICHELE D’ARCY MARINCOLA is Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of Conservation of the Conservation Center at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and managing conservator for NYU’s Acton Collection at Villa La Pietra in Florence, Italy. Before joining the university’s faculty as department chairman and professor of conservation in 2002, she was Conservator for The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Professor Marincola’s research interests include the conservation and technical art history of sculpture, as well as the history and ethics of art conservation. She designed and led a series of summer programs in technical art history for art historians, including the Summer Teachers Institute in Technical Art History for college and university faculty (funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation), now co-organized with the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Summer Institute in Technical Art History for graduate students in art history (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), which ran from 2011 – 2016. Professor Marincola is the editor of a recent edition and translation of Johannes Taubert’s Polychrome Sculpture, Meaning, Form, Conservation (Getty Publications, 2015) and is the author of numerous articles on the conservation and technical study of medieval wood sculpture and the history of its conservation in the United States. She is currently completing a book with co-author Lucretia Kargère on the conservation history and treatment of medieval polychrome wood sculpture, to be published by Getty Publications. This book project was awarded the 2015 FAIC-Samuel H. Kress Publication Award.
TONY SIGEL senior conservator of objects and sculpture at the Straus Center for Conservation, Harvard Art Museums. Apprentice-trained as a conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago, he has worked at Sardis, Turkey, most recently as supervising conservator. He has published and taught widely on conservation practice and technical art history. He received the Rome Prize in 2004, and co-curated the 20012-13 exhibition Bernini- Sculpting in Clay, at the Metropolitan and Kimbell Museum of Art. In September, 2016, he was appointed Robert Lehman visiting professor at Villa I Tatti, Florence, studying the techniques of Renaissance sculptural models.
AYESHA FUENTES is a research scholar and first-year MPhil/PhD in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where she is documenting the history and use of human remains in Himalayan ritual objects. She is a graduate of the UCLA/Getty MA Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials and has worked in objects conservation in the US, China, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Cambodia and Sudan.
GENEVA GRISWOLD is an Associate Objects Conservator at the Seattle Art Museum, focusing on the preservation of SAM’s pre-modern collections. Prior to SAM, Geneva was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and held positions at the Walters Art Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute. Her archaeological fieldwork includes seasons at Herculaneum and Abydos, Egypt. Geneva is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art and the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials.
Please see the following links for publications on the topic of mistakes by our speakers: