Cesar Pineiro and Marc Williams are in the planning stages of a
project called Helping Puerto Rican Heritage. Marc is the former Chief Wooden Objects
Conservator at the Smithsonian Institution and the founding Director of the
Smithsonian’s graduate level Furniture Conservation Training Program
(FCTP). Cesar was trained in the
second class of the Smithsonian program and practices conservation in Puerto
Rico. The project is designed
around bringing 25-30 professional conservators to Puerto Rico who will
volunteer their time in a number of collections preservation and care
activities. The project will be
based in the San Juan area.
Activities will include the following.
1) Tours of conservation facilities and conservation projects in
the general San Juan area. Field trips to outlying areas such as Ponce are
anticipated.
2) Speaking to students and others at the University of Puerto
Rico who are interested in conservation as a career.
3) Holding a seminar for staff of museums and historic sites on
preservation and care issues, grant funding for collections care, capacity
building, planning, and other aspects of collections stewardship, as well as
emergency preparedness and disaster response for cultural heritage
organizations.
4) Hold a day-long collections preservation and care practicum at
a specific museum/historic site in need. This will consist of working on an
achievable project at a not-for-profit on a specific need of theirs that can be
substantially accomplished in one day. Depending upon the specialties of the
participants, it could be at several different locations.
At the moment, we have the following institutional participants in
Helping Puerto Rican Heritage: University of Puerto Rico; San Juan National
Historic Site; Luis Munoz Marin Foundation.
The specific purpose of this notice is to gauge the interest in
the seminar within the cultural property museum community. We anticipate that the seminar will be
offered at no cost. The tentative
schedule follows.
Seminar at Fundación
Luis Muñoz Marín for staff of cultural property
institutions
9:00 – 12:00
Presentations on grant funding for collections care, capacity building,
planning, and other aspects of collections stewardship, as well as emergency
preparedness and disaster response for cultural heritage organizations. Hopefully this will be by staff of a
major Federal granting agency.
Initial response from them has been good, but they can not commit until
we have a core group of potential participants.
12:00 – 1:00
Lunch
1:00 – 5:00
Questions on collections preservation and care by museum staff attendees
answered by HPRH participant conservators.
Some of the conservators may make short presentations on various subjects
if desired by the participants.
If you would be interested in participating in the seminar, please
email [log in to unmask] for a questionnaire
that will allow us to plan to better meet your needs. If you do so, once final arrangements
are made, you will receive an emailed notice for registration. Thank you.
Marc A Williams, President, American Conservation Consortium, Ltd.
MS in Art Conservation, Winterthur Museum Program
Former Chief
Wooden Objects Conservator, Smithsonian Institution
Fellow, American
Institute for Conservation (AIC)
Cesar Pineiro, proprietor, Fine Arts International
FCTP graduate, Smithsonian Institution; MA in conservation, Antioch University
Professional Associate, AIC