Sustainability in Conservation Education


Phase One

The UCLA/Getty Conservation of Cultural Heritage Interdepartmental Program was awarded $75,000 for an eighteen-month research project to work with a Research Associate and an Advisory Committee in creating a strategic plan for teaching sustainability in cultural heritage conservation. The project is the first phase of a larger initiative to integrate sustainability theory and practice into course offerings, convene a workshop of interdisciplinary experts, and create models and scalable curricular materials for publication by eScholarship, an open access publishing platform subsidized by the University of California. We will develop materials through research at UCLA and the Getty, and distribute them widely to benefit educational programs in cultural heritage conservation, library and archives preservation, and conservation of the built environment.

Project dates: March 2021 – August 2022

Research Associate dates: June 2021 – March 2022

Co- Principal Investigators: Ellen Pearlstein & Glenn Wharton

Research Associate for the NEH Embedding Sustainability in Cultural Heritage Conservation: Justine Wuebold

Read the official funding announcement press release here.

Phase Two

The UCLA/Getty Conservation of Cultural Heritage Interdepartmental Program was awarded $350,000 for a Tier II Research and Development grant from the NEH.  The Embedding Sustainability in Cultural Heritage Conservation Education initiative includes research, analysis, and dissemination of data on barriers against integrating sustainability in conservation and its educational institutions. From our Phase I research we learned that regardless of whether respondents want to incorporate sustainability into their work, many face opposition or institutional resistance. We also found systematic exclusion of sustainability in our own teaching. The research is informed by intellectual and scientific research underway at UCLA, the Getty Conservation Institute, and global institutions across the humanities. It is also informed by multiple ways of caring for cultural heritage from our interdisciplinary team of Indigenous leaders, ethnographers, cultural resource managers, and community stakeholders. Our ultimate goal is to develop methods for mitigating sustainability barriers that will have impact across the humanities.

Project Dates: March 1, 2023 and extend for three years.

Co-Principal Investigators: Ellen Pearlstein & Glenn Wharton

Read the official funding announcement press release here.