Benefit 1: broaden our community
If we accept that conservators are not a homogeneous group with extensive training in art history, science, and studio art, we gain the ability to welcome a wide variety of people into our professional network. With this change we become more inclusive with regard to the people who conserve heritage.
What challenges do we need to overcome in order to welcome a wide variety of people into our community?
Diminize language walls to include and facilitate the access of information to professionals from other parts of the world and recognize their presence.
Veronica – Yes, yes, yes. I think Zoom can be a tool for this with its translation capacity. How do we provide platforms for ‘professionals from other parts of the world’ to teach us what they are doing?
Conservation knowledge should be accessible, but as someone entering private practice I find this challenging. When trying to figure out pricing, the “standard” rates are often prohibitive to smaller institutions. Yet offering reduced rates is seen as devaluing our own work or devaluing the profession. Small institutions and individuals looking for help in preserving their collections or even individual objects shouldn’t be made to feel like that kind of knowledge or service is reserved
for large museums and the wealthy.
Hi Emily – I’ve heard similar concerns raised by others working in the private sector. It’s unfortunate that setting prices relative to institutional size/capacity is seen as devaluing our work. I don’t think anyone would argue that a therapist who uses a sliding scale is less valuable or committed than a therapist who doesn’t! On the contrary- I’d argue that considering the needs and capabilities of our clients is a more compassionate way to work! I appreciate you sharing and hope that we can collectively raise awareness about how this type of pressure continues to harm both practitioners and communities.
Hi, I am a PhD student, studying the maintainers of technologies in time-based media art. I find this an intriguing statement. Lately I have been studying how some of the CRT television repair people are positioning themselves vis-à-vis conservation and museums. They are a small group of people, and their ideas differ widely. One of them even identified his work as conservation: “We are not a TV repair workshop. We do conservation.” I am still trying to make sense of my data sociologically, but this site helps me to think about it. I would love to join any conversations to come
As a Spanish conservator (although my point of view is common to most European countries where there is academic training for conservator-restorers of cultural heritage) I find this issue particularly delicate, as it is common situation to use the term conservator indistinctly to refer to a qualified conservator-restorer as to any other professional with another type of academic studies or VET (Vocational Education and Training).
Although this more inclusive evolution of all types of professionals in the cultural heritage sector is evident, I believe it is also important to protect the different professional groups in the most basic competences that define them.
This is evident in the inequalities that were (and still are) produced by the appropriation of core competencies of conservators by curators in museums and by architects in historic buildings as they are professionals with a longer track record than that of the conservators.