Board News

Outgoing Chairperson Debbie Hess Norris, new Chairperson Merv Richard, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a Capitol Hill ceremony sponsored by Heritage Preservation.

Merv Richard, Deputy Chief of Conservation at the National Gallery of Art, is the new Chair of Heritage Preservation’s Board of Directors. The election results were announced April 21 at the Heritage Preservation annual meeting in Denver. Merv has been a member of the Board ofDirectors since 1998, and has served as vice chair for the past four years. He succeeds Debra Hess Norris, whose service on the Heritage Preservation board was the subject of a special tribute at the annual meeting.

Elizabeth K. Schulte, a conservator in private practice in Atlanta, is the new Vice Chairperson. Doris Hamburg of the National Archives and Records Administration and Sherelyn Ogden of the Minnesota Historical Society were re-elected to second terms as Members at Large.

Merv Richard has worked at the National Gallery since 1984. He received his MA in Conservation from Oberlin College in 1978 and was a painting conservator at the Intermuseum Laboratory in Oberlin, Ohio, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Winterthur Museum. His scientific research has focused on the dimensional response of panel paintings to environmental variations and the behavior of works of art during transit. Merv served as Co-Chairman of the ICOM Working Group for Preventive Conservation and Working Group for Works of Art in Transit.