2009 Heritage Preservation Annual Meeting Highlights

Rachel Goslins, Executive Director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities

Heritage Preservation’s 2009 Annual Meeting was held on Tuesday, November 17, in Washington, D.C. at the National Archives. The Honorable Jim Leach, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, was the featured speaker. Click here to read Leach’s remarks.

Another highlight of the meeting was the presentation of Heritage Preservation’s highest honor, the Heritage Defender Award, to Angelica Rudenstine, Program Officer for Museums and Art Conservation at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The award was presented on January 7, 2010 to Anne-Imelda Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Rachel Goslins, recently appointed by President Obama as Executive Director of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, announced that the Save America’s Treasures grant program will have an increase of $5,000,000 in funds for competitive grants in 2010. She pointed out that the strongest applications to the program explicitly describe threats to the collections, rather than assuming that threats are understood. She also encouraged applicants to tell the compelling stories behind their collections in order to make the case for their preservation to funders and the public.

A panel on new directions in federal funding for preservation featured presentations by Marsha Semmel, Deputy Director for Museum Programs at the Institute of Museum and Library Services; Robert Frankel, Director, Museums and Visual Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts; and Nadina Gardner, Director of the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The reception, held after the Annual Meeting.

The meeting was followed by a reception, also held at the Archives, where Heritage Preservation members were able to meet and mingle with representatives of federal funding agencies, national leaders, and federal policy makers. Click here for our photo gallery of the meeting.