Some two hundred people are expected to attend the APOYOnline 30th Anniversary Conference and Workshop in Heritage Preservation, to be held from September 23-27 in Rio de Janeiro. The event will take place in Brazil for the first time and is being organized in partnership with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) and Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation, in collaboration with the University of Delaware. The theme is “30 Years Building Bridges and Pathways for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in the Americas.” Papers will be presented from seventeen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as from the United States, Canada, Spain, and Portugal.
The event will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the not-for-profit organization APOYOnline, dedicated to communication, exchange, and professional development in the field of heritage preservation in the Americas and in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries around the globe. The program will touch on such topics as networking, preventive conservation, risk management, professional training, and education in heritage preservation, digitization, and digital preservation. It will also include technical visits to cultural institutions in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
The event will kick off at the Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation, in the neighborhood of Botafogo, on September 23-24. Activities will be held at three other venues on September 25: Brazil’s National Library, the Rio de Janeiro State Public Archives, and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. On September 26-27, Fiocruz’s Casa de Oswaldo Cruz will host a workshop on the preservation of photographic material, fund-raising, and the protection of collections, led by Professor Debbie Hess Norris, of the University of Delaware.
Professor Norris, who is a world-renowned expert in the field of the conservation of photographic material, will give the keynote address on September 23, entitled “Just IMAGINE: Lessons Learned in Public Outreach, Partnerships, and Relevance.” Likewise on Monday, Beatriz Haspo, APOYOnline Executive Director, will chair the panel Networking and Communication, whose members include António Candeias, of the University of Évora, and Margarida Lages, of the Network of Diplomatic Archives of the Americas (RADI). Millard Schisler, Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University, will moderate the second panel, on Digitization and Digital Preservation. Panelists include Alan Haley, Preservation Specialist with the US Library of Congress, and Howard Besser, Professor at New York University.
On September 24, Professor Norris will chair a panel on Professional Development and Preservation Education, with the participation of Nora Kennedy, Chair of the Photograph Conservation Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. That same day, Rob Waller, Director of Canada’s Protect Heritage Corp, will moderate the panel Preventive Conservation and Risk Management. This panel will also feature the screening of an interview recorded especially for the event: Gael de Guichen, Special Advisor to the Director General of ICCROM, talking to José Luis Pedersoli, Brazilian Program Manager for Conservation of Collections, ICCROM. On September 25, at Fiocruz, Nora Kennedy will give a Public Lecture entitled “Preservation of Photographic Material: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.”
Fiocruz will also be the venue for the workshop in the Preservation of Photographic Material, offered by a team of specialists from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paul Getty Museum, and Harry Ransom Center and led by Professor Norris on September 26-27.
