AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The shift away from object-centered toward people-centered prioritization in decision-making for collections care and treatment approaches (see Clavir 2002 for example) is now core to professional practice as specified in AIC’s Essential Competencies (2021). Conservators must have a foundation in “understanding issues arising from the ways that cultural heritage will be accessed or used, balancing stakeholders’ needs with risks to the works, sites, or users” and “understanding of and sensitivity to the significance and values of cultural heritage in formulating preservation and conservation plans, treatments, analyses, testing and research.” We develop this understanding in many different ways, including by learning about those people for whom the item(s) being considered for conservation are important. 

Centering people is not to abandon our well-established conservation practices, but to complement them and the many choices we make by considering the impact we have on people through our treatments and care decisions. Bringing awareness to the role people play in conservation and developing a critical consciousness toward people and the impact of conservation work on people can help conservators make ethical care choices. If that consciousness is also an ingredient in developing robust and productive relationships, then developing empathic consciousness should be a goal in educating conservators. 

This presentation shares the research methods used to consider how to cultivate critical consciousness in a conservation education setting. The research is attempting to build an understanding of how to place the ethics of care (sometimes referred to as feminist ethics) into conversation with collections care by examining students’ critical consciousness of the relationship between objects and people via baskets. Using Fink’s taxonomy for significant learning, we explore the human and caring dimensions in which students learn to care for objects and people. 

Students in a basketry course served as a case study group. Their orientation towards people and also towards objects was measured at the start and end of the course with a survey, they were given written reflective assignments, and they were interviewed toward the end of the course to gauge if there was a change in their orientation towards either people or objects and to attempt identification of what specific educational methods played a role in engendering any change. The course was structured through a scaffolded series of lessons, research, and making activities that thread cultural learning and identification of object significance throughout. 

By identifying the conditions for critical consciousness development, we can explicitly teach it. When we encourage students to consider the people who make, use, and appreciate the objects they treat, the future conservators are better positioned to consider the impact of their treatment decisions and make choices that support those people. Since objects take on their importance based on values we ascribe to them, the ability to consider a range of value perspectives allows conservation practitioners to bring a more holistic approach to their work. A sustainable future of collections care must include meaningful considerations of those people who most care about the materials that we are preserving and conserving.