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By Bianca Garcia, Leticia Gomez Franco, and Annabelle Camp, Balboa Art Conservation Center
(Text originally published in Volume 45 Number 1 of the Western Association for Art Conservation Newsletter) Introduction In November 2022, The Mellon Foundation released their latest report on Art Museum Staff Demographics, and conservation was once again shown to be tied for the unfortunate title of “least diverse sector” in the museum field. At 80% White, the sector’s demographics match that of Museum Leadership and is similar to the demographics of museums’ collections departments at large which is 77% White (Sweeny et al. 2022). There are likely many factors contributing to this, including the barriers to conservation education and the general lack of awareness about conservation among the public. When considering potential careers, few students know conservation is a career path. This is especially true among communities whose cultural heritage has been underrepresented within cultural institutions and who have been excluded from arts and conservation access. Context For people to understand and aspire to a career in conservation, they must first understand and feel comfortable with art. Viewed this way, lack of awareness about conservation among the public is closely tied to a systemic lack of arts education in this country. Overall, arts education in schools has seen a decrease in funding and attention throughout the United States. Total U.S. legislative funding for art education in FY2021 dropped 17.9% from that of FY2020, and this represents a 38.7% drop from FY2001 (Mullaney-Loss and Rhee, 2021). This, however, does not affect all schools equally. Schools with a larger percentage of non-white students, low-income, and English learners saw a significantly larger decrease in the time spent on arts education. Title I schools– a federal education program that supports low income students throughout the nation– "are less likely to provide quality arts academic resources for further study, i.e. college and career prep, and artistic rigor standards'' (Krudwig, 2021). How can students from across the demographic spectrum have the same opportunity to choose a career in conservation when they all have not had the same access to the arts? In addition to this, we have to address the perception that conservation is niche and exclusive. To diversify the field of art conservation, we must make the field accessible to underrepresented communities. This has been recognized, and there is an ongoing effort in our field to do so. Some of the better known conservation diversity initiatives include...  The Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) in partnership with the Centro Cultural de la Raza presents Preserving Chicana/o/x Art: Conversations on Conservation. Through a series of informal dialogues- artists, community organizers, scholars, conservators, curators and administrators will explore issues of representation, cultural production, culturally responsive approaches to conservation, and community led standards for the care and preservation of Chicana/o/x cultural collections. The webinar series kicks off Thursday April 7th.
As museums move towards diversifying their collections it is important to have an understanding of the investment and process associated with stewarding and conserving Chicana/o/x artworks. “Conservation Centers like BACC are increasingly seeing more and more works by BIPOC artists come through the labs, which is long overdue, and also a reminder that the time is now to set standards for the care of these works. BACC is proud to be partnering with the Centro to engage in these conversations, understanding that as part of our mission to be an inclusive organization, we must follow the lead of communities in this important work” said Leticia Gomez Franco, Executive Director of the Balboa Art Conservation Center. “We’re excited to be in conversation with a truly stellar roster of community leaders.” 
Graduate Student Magdalena Solano is BACC'S 2021 Paintings Summer Intern 
FROM INTENTION TO INTENTIONALITY: LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED ALONG THE WAY -LETICIA GOMEZ FRANCO6/30/2021
I originally presented this as a talk titled From Intention to Intentionality: Centering Equity, Inclusion, and Representation in Cultural Preservation at the two-day colloquium, Diversity in Collections Care: Many Voices, organized by The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in March 2021. Because it memorializes the beginnings of a monumental shift for Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC) , the script from that talk has been transcribed and formatted to be shared here. I join you today from the ancestral homelands of the Kumeyaay Nation. Colonially known as the San Diego/Tijuana border region of Southern California/Baja California Norte. The Kumeyaay peoples continue to maintain their connection to, and care for, this land. Last summer, like many of your institutions, in the throes of dual pandemics, covid-19 and systemic racism and violence against the Black community, BACC decided it was time to make a change. After much thought, staff conceived of Preserve Community Art. This initiative was born in response to both a long standing need to acknowledge systemic racism and exclusion in the field of conservation as well as in direct and immediate response to the Summer of 2020 movement led by Black Lives Matter to address racial injustice. In its initial form, Preserve Community Art sought to support the documentation and preservation of San Diego Protest Art. The staff got to work on creating guidelines for protest art preservation and preventive care and put a call out to community members who could benefit from what BACC had to offer. The staff at the time, put much thought into how to approach this work. It was, after all, a new direction. Assuming, like most of us do, that if we took the time and the resources to build it, "they" would come. BACC built it, but much to its surprise "they" did not come. BACC did have the opportunity to work with a couple community led projects, but in all honesty, the Black community, whose historical exclusion from these services was what inspired the creation of Preserve Community Art - was not engaged. I titled this talk From Intention to Intentionality. BACC's intention was to address the disparity in access to conservation services and engage the Black community and communities of color in art conservation. But intentions, as well intentioned as they may be, are passive. Intentions are what we wake up with in the morning. What we say to ourselves in the mirror to remind us that we've got this. What we whisper into the wind. We put intentions out, because we believe in some cosmic flow that will take them somewhere and materialize them for us. But Intentions are just that. Mutterings of what we want. The journey from intention to intentionality is a long one. It starts with intention, sure. we need those. to verbalize what is in our hearts. But without intentionality, those intentions just sit there idly. For BACC, Preserve Community Art was intention. |