2009 Arts and Humanities Summer Institute

The 2009 Arts and Humanities Summer Institute’s focus this year was Art Conservation. Seven students from across the nation came to the University of Delaware for this exceptional educational opportunity. The program took place June 7th - July 3rd, and the aims of this institute were: to encourage diversity in Arts and Humanities programs, to allow students to work with various faculty members of the University of Delaware, and to expose the students to the expectations of graduate-level academia.

The schedule of the institute entailed morning and afternoon lectures on topics in Art Conservation, evening workshops on expectations of graduate school, guest lecturers from the University of Delaware, and field trips on Fridays to nearby cultural institutions. The field trips included the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, the Barnes Foundation and a trip to the Lunder Conservation Center in Washington, D.C.

Each student created a twenty - minute informational lecture that was accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation for a Material Culture Preservation workshop on June 29th and a final research symposium on June 30th. The students also produced a poster for presentation to University Collections Managers and faculty. The topics of both the presentations and the posters included:

Jane Rivas - University of Illinois
Reducing Light Damage in Exhibitions

Veronica Perez - Florida International University
Controlling Relative Humidity for Collections

Shannon Brogdon - Grantman. Spelman College, GA
Humidification and Flattening of Photographic Materials

Deanna Clark - Georgia State University
Techniques for Labeling Photographic Materials

Keala Mason - James Madison University, VA
Selecting Enclosures for Photographic Materials

Jessica Growing Thunder Jimenez - Sierra College, CA
Recommendations for Establishing Cold Storage for Negative Collections

Akiceri Carrillo - University of Texas at El Paso
Choosing Digital Output Materials

[Article by: Kela Mason, James Madison University
Photo by: Ambre Alexander]