AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage is addressing our changing and uncertain future from multiple angles, including an increased engagement with historically underrepresented communities. Our recently created Director of Community Engagement and Inclusive Practice position was specifically designed to employ a conservator who could help the Program contribute to the preservation of African American cultural heritage. In time, we hope to expand our model to serve other underserved communities. This presentation will cover the structure of this position as a model for engaging with underrepresented communities and further instigating DEIA progress. We include examples of our current work with community partners, and present challenges faced in our efforts.

The Community Engagement and Inclusive Practice initiative has a number of distinct goals. In addition to forming external preservation-focused collaborations with African American organizations, we also seek to codify inclusive thinking into the educational experience within our Program through developing collaborative projects for coursework, creating internship opportunities related to African American culture and history, providing diverse learning opportunities for students, and revising Program policies. Time for outreach and activism is also built into the role.

The American conservation field is woefully lacking in diversity. Although conservators handle a wide variety of cultural items, they typically work within a colonial framework in which African American material culture is overlooked. Here we present targeted investment in community engagement as a pathway towards increased inclusion of African American people and their cultural heritage. Too often DEIA work is an add-on to cultural heritage practices, and conservators of color regularly take on this extra work without additional compensation. We believe that DEIA advances are doomed to fail or will have very little long-term effect if there are not paid staff dedicated to this work.

Although the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program has a history of championing DEIA and community outreach projects, it became clear that a specific position was needed through which the Director could devote the majority of her time to creating collaborative projects with underrepresented communities. We also gave this position a local focus so that the Conservation Program could practice the ethos of being a good neighbor and reach out to those in our direct vicinity. This meant first extending a hand towards a wider circle of individuals within the UCLA community, followed by culturally specific arts institutions in Southern California and local conservators. We believe that it is the responsibility of conservators to respond to population diversity and to raise expectations by initiating conversations with historically underrepresented communities. With an open mind, conservators can respond to community needs while simultaneously working to revise our internal organizational cultures. In this way, embracing change will ultimately make our field more resilient to change and better positioned to contribute to preservation efforts that engage communities with their cultural heritage in addition to preserving it for the future.