 Every year the AIC begins its annual meeting with an invitational keynote presentation selected not only because of the timeliness and relevance of the topic to our members, but also because of the national status and powerful alignment of the speakers, in this case, and the organization, the National Endowment for the Humanities with our organization, the AIC. This year, our keynote speakers, NEH Acting Chairman Adam Wolfson and NEH Chief of Staff Kelsey Coates, will introduce to you the work of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Held in Trust, an initiative that promises to transform our field by assessing the state of preservation and conservation of cultural heritage in the United States. Following their remarks, the Held in Trust project coordinator Pam Hatchfield will elaborate on this unparalleled opportunity for the AIC and how you can get involved. Our first speaker is Adam Wolfson, the Assistant Chair for Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the current Acting Chairman of the NEH. Adam has also served as Director of NEH Division of Research Programs, and he is also a teacher. He's taught at John Hopkins University and Claremont McKenna College, Washington DC's program and elsewhere. Adam holds his A.B. and history from Harvard University and his PhD in political science from the University of Chicago. He's author of persecution or toleration, an explication of the Locke-Prosquarell of 1689 to 1704, and I have to admit that I was a little unfamiliar with the Locke-Prosquarell in late 17th century England. However, a little investigation suggests that the philosopher John Locke's radical case for tolerance, as opposed to persecution, would seem to be particularly germane today. Our second speaker is Kelsey Coates, Chief of Staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to joining NEH, Kelsey was Director of Research at the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition and Team and Senior Associate Research Director in the Obama White House. She previously served as Chief of Staff at a nonprofit that conducted public interest investigations into climate denialism, public health, health disinformation, and violent extremism. She is co-founder of an art education teacher training program in Hyderabad, India, and has served in multiple capacities in the international educational field. Held in Trust, Project Coordinator Pamela Hatchfield will follow. She is the Robert P. and Carol T. Henderson, Head of Objects Conservation Emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Confining my remarks to only her record of service to AIC and arguably her superior qualifications as Project Coordinator, she has served most recently as AIC President and previously as Vice President, Director for Public Information, Program Chair and Chair of the Objects Specialty Group, a member of the Publication and Appeals Committees, and a JAIC publication reviewer, and an FAIC grant reviewer. Stay tuned to hear more about Pam's achievements during our awards session, which will commence at 4 o'clock. Before beginning, I would like to remind all listeners to submit questions at any time to the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom webinar page. Your questions will be monitored and submitted to our speakers for a moderated session after Pam's remarks. Thank you very much. Hello. I'm Adam Wolfson, Acting Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I want to begin by thanking Peggy for the warm introduction, as well as Errol, the AIC Board, and AIC staff for the invitation to speak today. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the membership of AIC and others attending today's meeting for your dedication to the preservation of our nation's cultural heritage. NEH could not do its work without the passion that you bring to conserving the objects, places, and cultures that form the tapestry of our shared human story. I'm glad to be joining you along with NEH's chief of staff, Kelsey Coates, to offer a welcome from NEH. I'd also like to share a few words about the importance of developing a long-term vision for the preservation of cultural heritage in the United States. I hope that this vision, to be developed through the NEH-supported held-in-trust planning process, will inform the work of educators, policymakers, funders, and the general public. The preservation of cultural heritage is fundamental to the work of NEH. Heritage objects represent the palpable traces of human history. They are the physical manifestations of individuals, families, and communities from our past, including their thoughts, achievements, and sorrows. Heritage collections define our historical identity and illuminate our origins while providing physical touchpoints for sharing new stories, histories, and experiences. Since NEH's inception in 1965, it has both supported and benefited from the work of conservators. Exhibitions require objects, after all, while scholars rely on archives for their research, and K-12 educators develop lesson plans based on artifacts and digital collections. As the field of conservation developed, so did NEH's support for this important work. Starting in 1991, preservation-related activities previously supported through NEH's other divisions were consolidated under a newly formed division of preservation and access, or P&A. Today, P&A sponsors a wide range of grant programs to support the training of conservators, fundamental research into collections environments, assessment for collecting institutions, and disaster preparedness and response efforts. I have been fortunate to see some of these developments firsthand. In my first 15 years at NEH, I have watched as P&A programs have expanded their reach and influence. Through its preservation assistance grants program, P&A now supports preservation work in all 50 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. P&A's sustaining cultural heritage collections program was one of the first of its kind to encourage the field to think about the impact of climate and the environment on collections. I'm excited to see where P&A and NEH and the field as a whole will go in the years ahead. While P&A's programs have been successful in supporting the conservation field, it has become clear that field-wide change requires a level of collaboration beyond a single program, grant, or organization. It requires that we ask hard questions about our past, present, and future, and then we engage with communities beyond the walls of our institutions. It requires listening and reflection. Towards this end, NEH's special initiative, A More Perfect Union, seeks among other goals to preserve the objects, places, and stories that document our nation's struggle towards a more just, inclusive, and sustainable society. As a part of this special initiative, NEH was pleased to enter into a cooperative agreement with FAIC in support of held in trust. Through this three-year collaboration, NEH and FAIC will explore such important topics as sustainability, climate change, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the context of the conservation field. The project will culminate with a national meeting in 2022 with the goal of developing a long-range plan for sustaining the field of cultural heritage preservation. Over the past year, the leadership team of FAIC and project coordinator Pamela Hatchfield have been developing a framework that will encourage the field to move from surviving to thriving. The steering committee, advisory board, and working groups will collaborate with the broader community to engage with some of the pressing issues of our time, including climate change, racial equity, and institutional sustainability for the purpose of developing a forward-looking plan. The final meeting will present this plan and include a report identifying national priorities in terms of conservation research, resources in education, establishing best practices for maintaining our diverse cultural heritage materials, and by suggesting pathways for building future leadership in the field to ensure the continued safety of our nation's cultural resources. Ultimately, the project will help demonstrate the vital role that historic artifacts and documents play in telling America's stories and the steps needed to preserve these resources. NEH's founding legislation affirms, in its words, that while no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the federal government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry, but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent. Held in trust can help release this creative talent, your creative talent, and that of the field as a whole. Through a shared vision, Held in trust will help encourage freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry for the preservation and conservation fields. I'd like to close with a few words about where we are today to be followed by remarks from Kelsey Coates on NEH's support of the Biden-Harris administration's priorities. During the past year, NEH staff have been working remotely while continuing with our regular selection of programs. As you know, in the pandemic hit last year, Congress looked to NEH to assist the cultural sector. Through the CARES Act, NEH was pleased to distribute about 75 million in emergency funding for the cultural sector, including our state partners, the state and jurisdictional humanities councils. Now, through the American Rescue Plan, Congress has again turned to NEH to support the cultural sector. The American Rescue Plan of 2021 recognizes the importance of the humanities to economic and civic life in the United States. The Act appropriated 135 million in supplemental funding to NEH to provide emergency relief to humanities organizations that have been adversely affected by the pandemic. To learn more about how these funds will be distributed, please see the NEH website. None of us has been untouched by the fatigue of the past year, the lives lost and disrupted, and the uncertainty that we face moving forward. But we will find a way of moving forward by drawing upon the collective wisdom of the humanities community. Indeed, it is our hope that the plan that will emerge from held in trust will launch us all into a new era where preservation will not just survive but thrive. And as a thriving community of practitioners, it will support, encourage and promote the diverse histories that weave together our nation. Thank you and thank you for all your great work. Thank you, Adam, for your reflections on held in trust and the importance of preservation and conservation to NEH's work. And thank you, Peggy, for the warm introduction and welcome. My name is Kelsey Coates, and I'm Chief of Staff at the National Endowment for the Humanities. I'm delighted to have a few minutes to share more about some of the strategic directions for NEH in the coming years under the Biden-Paris administration, including the More Perfect Union Initiative, which commemorates the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. At NEH, we see so much alignment across the endowment's priorities and the work that you all do in your professions, day in and day out, as well as the contributions of held in trust to the future of this field. Under the Biden-Paris administration, NEH will be prioritizing five key pillars across the agency. The first and second pillars are advancing racial equity and confronting the climate crisis, both through the humanities programs we support and the policies we enact to ensure that our programs are equitable and sustainable. This follows President Biden's executive orders calling for a whole-of-government approach to rooting out structural racism and systemic barriers to equity, inclusion, and access in the federal government, as well as the threat of climate change. Held in Trust is also addressing these issues through strategic directions that will explore climate change and environmental sustainability, as well as diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, including social and environmental justice. Held in Trust's strategic focuses on philosophy and ethics in conservation theory and practice and on education, training, and leadership are also closely aligned with NEH's pillar of advancing racial equity. Working toward diversity and leadership must start in educational programs and recruitment. The future of conservation practice and theory must also appropriately value and center DEAI principles and the cultural heritage of diverse populations. This will no doubt take time, discussion, reflection, and effort, and for this reason, we are glad that Held in Trust is making space for these collaborative and important deliberations. The work of Held in Trust is also examining the current state and future directions of this field regarding climate change, environmental sustainability, collection care and management, preventative conservation, science and research, and digital preservation, which are all likely to make important contributions to both prolonging the useful life of collections and reducing the environmental impact of doing so. Preservation professionals are also leaders in disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response, a role that is increasingly important as our climate changes and the incidence of natural disasters trend toward being more frequent and more severe in this country. Third Paris administration pillar for NEH is restoring America's standing in the world through international programs and engagements that champion the nation's excellence in the humanities to global audiences. Conservation and preservation of cultural heritage are particularly international fields, and several of the focus areas for Held in Trust have the potential to ensure that the United States continues to be an international leader in this work. The fourth and Harris administration pillar is combating the dual COVID-19 and economic emergencies and their devastating impacts on the cultural sector. At NEH, we are implementing the American Rescue Plan, through which we will be distributing more than $129 million in emergency relief to educational and cultural institutions nationwide. As we pivot from recovery to resilience, we will also explore capacity building programs that strengthen institutions' abilities to weather future economic or public health crises. The impetus for the Held in Trust project has been to set out a vision for a thriving and sustainable field of preservation and conservation nationwide, which of course includes the field's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. NEH's fifth and Harris administration pillar is strengthening our democracy through the humanities. This is NEH's founding mandate. We have long supported programs that strengthen Americans' knowledge of and commitment to the country's principles of constitutional governance and democracy, but we will be seeking opportunities to increase this work because, as President Biden said in his recent joint address, the question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent. Through our More Perfect Union initiative, NEH supports projects that explore, reflect on, and tell the stories of our democracy in quest for a more just, inclusive, and sustainable society. Held in Trust is a standout project under the More Perfect Union umbrella because it examines the intersection of cultural heritage preservation with the most urgent issues of our time, including sustainability, social and racial justice, equity and diversity, climate change, and environmental resource preservation. NEH is proud to support the Held in Trust project. Thank you so much for having me today. I welcome questions you may have for me, as I know while acting chair Adam Wilson. Before the floor is open for questions though, I will turn it to Pamela Hatchfield to provide some further details on the workings and specifics of this important initiative. Thank you. Hi everybody. I'm really thrilled to have NEH acting chairman Adam Wilson and Chief of Staff Kelsey Coates here with us today. Thank you so much for your wonderful presentations. I think that Kate is going to, yeah, she's going to put the slides up and I am going to attempt to drive them. So we'll see how this goes. I'm speaking to you today from unseated traditional lands of the Massachusetts nation today known as Boston, Massachusetts. The name Massachusetts means people of the Great Hills, referring to the Blue Hills south of Boston Harbor. I acknowledge the Massachusetts community, their elders past and present, as well as future generations. This country was founded upon exclusions and erasures of many indigenous peoples, including those whose lands I am on now. So here you see an abbreviated version of the mission of held in trust. Excuse me our aim is to evaluate the state of preservation and conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in the United States. We're identifying and investigating opportunities obstacles and needs, along with the resources required to sustain the field. This NEH funded initiative is engaging in a broad range of conservation and allied professionals stakeholders and communities and exploring the intersection and impact of urgent global challenges with the profession, including sustainability, and including the many significant manifestations of that term, social and racial justice, equity and diversity, climate change, biodiversity, and environmental resource protection, as well as technological change and innovation. The true value of this project lies in its potential to strengthen and enrich the bonds between those of us dedicated to preserving cultural heritage and the communities who create it, treasure it and imbue it with meaning. I cannot do this without sharing and developing a deep understanding of each other's space. And by that I mean physical, intellectual, civic, spiritual, and other ways as well. This is why it makes so much sense and why we are so honored to partner with the National Endowment for Humanities in this project. The outcomes of this project will weave the preservation of cultural heritage into many facets of our world, just as issues of critical importance in our world today are inextricably intertwined with our work as conservation and preservation professionals. We've identified nine critical topics for study and you see them here on the slide. And each of these subject areas is led by members of our steering committee who I'll introduce you to very briefly in a minute. They are supported in turn by working groups which are now being formed, and we will be soliciting your advice and participation as we develop these topics. All of these subject areas are interrelated of course. For example, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility is woven into every single other subject area. But because of its critical importance we call it out here as an individual topic. The same goes for climate change as well as sustainability. This subject alone includes numerous meanings financial environmental but also will consider the sustainability of collecting practices in institutions today. Similarly sustainability issues appear in education training and leadership, science and materials, as well as digital research and practice. And of course, philosophy and ethics filter into and shape all of the other subject areas. Digital issues likewise are part of all the other areas. At the moment our steering committee is in the process of determining three critical areas of study within each of these subject areas. Now this is a lot of information but I will tell you how we can share it with you again, and more permanently than just a few slides. So I want to take a minute to introduce you to our remarkable steering committee, whose members are sharing that subject areas that you just saw. They are a group with a very broad range of experience and expertise. But not all of them come from preservation or conservation backgrounds and this is quite intentional. You'll also see their subject areas listed below their names and some of them as you'll see have very generously offered to take on more than one subject area. They span a range from architectural conservation to natural history, private practice, regional conservation centers, educational institutions, public art institutions, research science, criminal justice reform and grassroots community activism through the arts. And I just want to say it is such an incredible privilege to be working with all of you. Thank you for agreeing to serve on the steering committee. Also, individuals representing 25 organizations working in cultural heritage and allied fields form the held interest advisory council and additional partners will be invited to join us further input becomes needed. The advisory council offers guidance and expertise, and we'll provide a conduit for dissemination of our project outputs. This is my first attempt at data visualization. It's not really data but it's information visualization. It's somewhat imperfect but I hope a useful visualization of our work in our process. In the near term, we are focusing on characterizing the current situation, where we are what we have and data that already exists. Where do we already have useful information and where is it lacking. For example, we have data from the 2005 heritage health index project, which was initiated by heritage preservation and the IMLS. And then the subsequent IMLS heritage health information survey which was released in 2019. Additionally, other very valuable information already exists such as the project to chart the digital landscape of the conservation profession, and that was generously funded by Mellon, Getty and Cress and that was published in 2015. These initiatives provide an excellent starting point for further analysis and development and will certainly prove very useful to us. So far we're in a position to identify where we need to be headed and what resources are needed to help us get there. Our articulation of a forward looking vision for the preservation of cultural heritage in the US will lead to many outcomes, and not all at the same time of course but you'll see at least some of them listed at the right hand side of the slide. This is a moment of tremendous transformation in the field of conservation and preservation. The interconnectedness of our work with issues of urgent concern in the world. Today has never been more clear. No one can imagine that we will just be able to or even want to focus on the minutiae of our craft. Well, our work takes place on a planet whose natural environment is endangered to the point where everything we do is impacted. We need help, and we need to do whatever we can do to help develop solutions in our practice as conservators archivists, custodians and perverse preservers of cultural heritage. Similarly, it's never been more critical that we understand the nature and fragility of the objects we hold dear and the monuments around us. They are imbued with such power, because they hold our stories and our histories. Again, we need the help of many communities to help us understand their meaning, their nature, and our ideas about who does this work, why, and how. So I hope this has given everyone an idea of the scope of the project and a taste of the excitement around it. I want to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the steering committee, the advisory council, and my wonderful team members who you see listed here. It's an amazing opportunity to take stock of our field and where we are headed, and to move from a world in which, in the words of the NEH, we merely survive to being able to thrive. And we welcome your thoughts and participation in this process. More information will be forthcoming. Please find us on our web page, our discussion forum, and our email which you see listed here. Thank you very much.