Heritage Health: Strategies Toward the Preservation of America's Collections

2006 Annual Meeting, November 15, Washington DC

The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, Smithsonian Institution, 8th and G Streets, NW, 1:30-5:00 pm

The findings of the Heritage Health Index highlighted major issues facing America's collections. The 2006 annual meeting will focus on solutions to these problems. Advanced registration is now closed, but you may register on-site.

The SOS! wall outside the Lunder
Conservation Center. Photo by Carl Hansen.

Anne-Imelda Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will keynote the meeting. Addressing two of the most urgent issues raised by the Heritage Health Index, the need for climate control and emergency planning, will be, respectively, James Reilly of the Image Permanence Institute and Marjie Gowdy of the Ohr O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Shailagh Murray of the Washington Post will analyze the mid-term election results and preview how they will shape the new Congress. A look at how the elections may influence policy toward programs that support collections and culture will be provided by Jessica Irons of the National Humanities Alliance.

Meeting in the Smithsonian's Reynolds Center, which houses the newly re-opened Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery, will give participants the opportunity to view the Lunder Conservation Center, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, and the recently renovated galleries. A reception (5:00 - 6:30) will follow the meeting.

The meeting is supported by the Peck Stacpoole Foundation in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of its founder, S. Allyn Peck.