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Although participants come with a background in art or science, many don’t realize all that is possible in the conservation field. Taryn Nurse, a 2017 and 2022 participant, began at Fisk University in a pre-med track with a double major in art, but after a hospital internship realized she did not want to pursue a medical career. “I didn’t know how art and science could intersect, but the program showed me it was possible. I saw skills from both fields come into play, and I left the program feeling confident that this is a field I can be successful in.”
Nurse stayed in contact with faculty members, who encouraged her to apply for UD’s graduate program. She will begin WUDPAC this fall with the goal of working in natural history conservation.
The need for representation
Museum professionals of the 1950s and earlier were mostly white men and some women who weren’t expected to earn an income. As a graduate student in New York City in the 1960s, Joyce Hill Stoner, the Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Material Culture, and coordinator of the first three Introduction to Practical Conservation workshops, saw this firsthand: “I knew of curators who earned just one dollar a year. They were from wealthy families, and when you were from a wealthy family you didn’t need the museum to pay you. You felt privileged to work in a museum.”
Surveys conducted in the mid-2010s by the Mellon Foundation and the American Institute for Conservation verified that not enough had changed since Stoner’s time as a student: American museums were overwhelmingly staffed by low-paid white women, and steps needed to be taken to increase diversity and representation and decrease salary discrepancies.
Owczarek explained the negative impact on artwork and objects: “If you don’t have people from diverse backgrounds doing conservation treatments, then you’re not necessarily taking in the whole picture. You’re not necessarily considering all of an artifact’s needs in a cultural context.”
Fields added, “African-American and minority cultures are often overlooked or passed by unless they are championed by the people that lived them. Historically in America, those histories are not preserved correctly or treated with an appropriate ethos of care.”
By partnering with organizations like Alliance of HBCU Museums and Galleries and with financial support from institutions such as Bank of America, UD and Winterthur will continue to address inequities and help preserve art and history of all Americans.