AIC Oral History Excerpts
Excerpt from Arthur Beale’s oral history interview conducted by LeeAnn Barnes Gordon on June 24, 2012 in Scituate, Massachusetts
They were designed to get the best and most professional approach, best thinking and most current thinking and to save a lot of people from reinventing the wheel...
Excerpt from Marigene H. Butler’s FAIC oral history interview conducted by Joyce Hill Stoner on September 2, 1999 at the Winterthur Museum
I think the biggest challenge in those days,at that time, was getting all of the other labs to collaborate. A, to not be afraid of NCAC and B, to collaborate as institutions rather than as individuals under AIC.
Excerpts from an oral history interview with Charles Hummel about the NCAC, NIC, and HP conducted by Joyce Hill Stoner on January 2, 2020 in the Belknap Room, Winterthur Museum
I still remember being a big mouth at an AIC meeting before we got the go ahead to build our conservation facilities here [at Winterthur]...
Excerpt from Paul Perrot’s FAIC oral history interview conducted by Joyce Hill Stoner on February 9, 1979 in Washington, DC
[Conservation] should be a line item, at the same level of priority as guardianship, heating and cleaning and those other unglamorous activities, which are essential if a museum is to function properly. To suggest that museums can postpone conservation or dispense with it...is not right.
Excerpts from Anne Radice’s oral history interview conducted by telephone on July 24, 2020
I went to the White House [and] I brought ten copies of the Heritage Health Index and I put them down and I said, “This is what I want to accomplish in my four year term. I really want to make a difference when it comes to preservation and conservation.”
Excerpts from Larry Reger’s oral history interview conducted by Anne Kingery-Schwartz on March 30, 2012
When we changed our name from the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property to Heritage Preservation, you would’ve thought that we were trying to rewrite the Declaration of Independence!
Excerpt from Will Shank’s FAIC oral history interview conducted by Kendall George on August 27, 2009 in San Francisco, CA
I'd been called in by a lawyer to help to solve a problem of a mural in the Mission that disappeared, it was painted over at the corner of 17th and Harrison...the lawyers came and said 'What usually happens in this case? What do you do when a mural disappears?' What I found out during the course of this particular situation was that there was no usual.
Excerpt from Norman Weiss’ oral history interview Part Three conducted by Rebecca Rushfield on Friday October 7, 2016 in New York City
And we were delighted to be able to make reference to architectural conservation at a time when the field was really almost non-existent in terms of technical studies and people were still unsure what the connection was between preservation as a movement to somehow legally save buildings from the bulldozer and this other area of conservation, which was much more material science based.