We welcome abstracts that focus on any of the following topics, specialties, or interests in relation to the conservation and preservation of cultural heritage. You may choose a general or concurrent session from the themes listed next, or select from the following options for your first or second choice.

• Archaeological Heritage
• Architecture
• Book & Paper
• Contemporary Art
• Electronic Media
• Imaging
• Laser Cleaning
• Objects
• Paintings
• Photographic Materials
• Preventive Care, Materials Testing
• Scientific Research/Technical Studies
• Sustainability/Climate Change
• Textiles
• Wooden Artifacts

What is a Conservation Professional?

Session Chair: Sarah Scaturro, 5-minute flash presentations + panel and Q&A

The question of what constitutes a conservation professional has been debated since the field's inception. Historical debates about professional identity focused primarily on conservators and the qualifications that distinguished them from other adjacent disciplines. Training, ethical standards, scientific knowledge, and demonstrated competence became key markers of professional identity, conferring authority and legitimacy within the field and the broader cultural heritage sector.

Questions of authority and expertise were central to AIC's certification initiatives in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, which sought to distinguish trained professionals from unqualified practitioners. These efforts can be understood not only as attempts to uphold standards of practice, but also as responses to ongoing concerns about professional identity and legitimacy. Their ultimate failure reflected the field's enduring ambivalence about how professionalism should be defined. Similar tensions can be seen in the recent vote to extend the authority to approve changes to AIC's Code of Ethics to all members, rather than limiting that responsibility to Fellows and Professional Members.

As conceptions of conservation expertise have broadened, the field has increasingly embraced approaches grounded in collaboration and the sharing of authority with source communities and other knowledge holders. While these developments have been widely welcomed, their implications for professional identity remain underexamined. If authority was once considered a defining and desirable characteristic of conservation professionalism, what does it mean when that authority is intentionally redistributed? How should conservation professionalism be understood when expertise is negotiated across diverse forms of knowledge and experience?

By fostering critical reflection and dialogue, this session will explore the historical, contemporary, and future boundaries of conservation professionalism, examining how concepts of expertise, authority, and responsibility have evolved and continue to be redefined.

This 75-minute session invites participants to offer five-minute responses to the question, "What is a conservation professional?" Following these presentations, speakers will engage in a moderated discussion and Q&A with one another and with audience members. To be considered for inclusion, please submit a brief response (250 words or fewer) addressing the prompt: "What is a conservation professional?"

Cross-Specialty Tips Session

Session Chairs: Adrianna Benavides (PSG), Ellen Promise (OSG), and Bogna Skwara (CAN!), 5-7 minute flash presentations

The General Tips Session is back! The Paintings Specialty Group (PSG), the Objects Specialty Group (OSG), and the Contemporary Art Network (CAN!) are co-sponsoring a two-part cross-specialty tips session focused on tools and materials that conservators have innovated or swapped to better work for their needs. Part one will focus on exploring replacements for beloved but difficult-to-acquire or no-longer-made conservation materials, as well as materials being phased out due to health and safety or environmental concerns. Part two will focus on “home-made,” specific-use tools and innovative repurposing tools from other professions that conservators use in their lab spaces to make our jobs easier. Submissions from any specialty are welcome!

Topics: 

• Treatments in which the replacement material was used, with a focus on the new material’s performance. 
• Testing, experimentation, or mock-use of new materials used in an effort to understand their similarities and differences to the material they are aiming to replace.
• Tools made by conservators for conservators!
• 3D-printed tools for conservation.
• Tools from other professions used for niche conservation needs. 

Presentation will be flash-style, 5-7 minutes each.

Flash Poster General Session

Session Chair: Abed Haddad, AIC Vice President, 5-minute flash presentations

We plan to host 15-20 poster authors for a 5-minute flash poster presentation during our general sessions. If you are interested in being considered for a flash poster presentation, please select that option on your poster submission. 

A Failure Shared is Not a Failure: Learning from Our Mistakes

Session Chairs: Tony Sigel and Kari Rayner, 8-minute presentations

Start thinking now about about mistakes or errors you can share that could inform or inspire others! They will be featured in the 10th annual occurrence of this session, to be hosted as the closing event. 

Imaging and Building Trust

Session Chair: Tessa de Alarcon (IWG), 20-minute presentations

Imaging crosses all specialty groups and, as part of documentation, is important to the ethical and evolving practice of conservation. It can also allow us to visualize objects in new ways and see things that may be hidden. Imaging is part of many of our practices and of how trust is established, maintained, challenged, and renewed. How do imaging advances impact intangible and community-based heritage conservation work? How can imaging aid in building new relationships?  This session seeks to examine how imaging and conversations around imaging can aid in building trust. The session applications could focus on any of the following questions: When is an image or imaging technique inappropriate, and how do we have these conversations and discussions? When is imaging critical in illustrating a point to further communication in building relationships? With culturally sensitive objects, when are the images of those objects also sensitive, and how is that navigated? Case studies around imaging and its role in communication with various communities will also be welcome.

Tending the Afterlife: The treatment of mummified human remains 

Session Chairs: JP Brown, Molly Gleeson, Ellen Promise (OSG), Morgan Burgess (AHN), 20-minute presentations

Mummified human remains are found in museum collections worldwide, often far removed geographically and chronologically from their contexts of origin. Many of these remains have associated wrappings and funerary materials whose states of preservation vary from excellent to extremely poor. Some existing losses and damages were caused deliberately by earlier anthropologists and cultural workers. Higher levels of loss and damage can create extremely challenging treatment problems, especially when there is no clear pathway to engaging with ancestral communities. 

Investigation, treatment, and restoration of such remains range from minimal to highly invasive and typically involve decision-making based on research and trust among conservation professionals, bioanthropologists, curators, and, sometimes, representatives from a specific community of origin, but more often from a specific community of care.

This session will explore approaches to treating and restoring mummified human remains. The organizers recognize the difficulties inherent in discussing these matters but feel that this makes it all the more important to create a space where such discussions can take place. We particularly welcome contributions that address issues of treatment of loss or damage, offer reflections on past decisions, and/or highlight how conservation professionals balance treatment priorities, research and exhibit goals, and ethical considerations.

Time Travelers: Accelerated Aging and Predictive Conservation Modeling

Session Chairs: Ahmed Tarek Ibrahim (RATS) and Lisa Goldberg (PCN), 20-minute presentations

This session seeks to explore how accelerated aging studies, computational modeling, and artificial intelligence can help us understand and predict long-term degradation processes. Predictions about material changes complement the work already completed by conservation scientists and preventive care professionals, enabling conservators to envision themselves as “time travelers.” Sponsored by the Research and Technical Studies group and the Preventive Care Network, this session encompasses the following topics:

• Accelerated Aging Protocols: Creative solutions to long-term and extreme environmental simulation in tightly controlled, highly precise experimental settings
• Computational Modeling and Artificial Intelligence Applications: Prediction of material degradation and recognizable deterioration patterns through advanced machine learning, computational, and mathematical models
• Environmental Monitoring: The use of advanced sensors and sophisticated data analysis techniques for environmental evaluation
• Preventive Conservation Planning: Predictive models for effective planning of preventive conservation measures

These topics can be applied broadly to environmental monitoring and control, materials selection, exhibition planning, and building modifications based on modeling.

Navigating Contemporary Commissions (part 1)

Session Chairs: Haddon Dine and Natalya Swanson, 20-minute presentations

Increasingly common and unexpectedly complex, artist commissions are ripe with unknowns and restrictions. They are often the result of a highly collaborative process that depends on a network of relationships and trust among institutional staff and artists' studios. Typically innovative and experimental in design and materials, sometimes site-specific, contemporary commissions may have no end date for display or confirmation of whether they are being acquired, and maintenance considerations may or may not be addressed at the planning stages. In response, collection care workers' responsibilities can be thrown into flux, perhaps requiring unexpected strain on resources, adapting workflows, and establishing new team dynamics. With each commission, lessons are learned, but it's not always clear how to apply knowledge to future commissions or integrate ideas into established workflows. We are interested in hearing from colleagues who have developed cross-departmental strategies and frameworks for navigating the planning, installation, preservation, and aftermath stages of contemporary commissions. By holding space to discuss conflicting priorities, navigating unique or unknown relational and material terrains, and relationship dynamics, we aim to collectively grow to meet current and future project needs.

Navigating Ethical Dimensions in Contemporary Art in the Artist’s Absence (part 2)

Session Chair: Alessandra Guarascio, 20-minute presentations

To what extent can decisions be trusted when the artist becomes inaccessible or unresponsive? How do you validate your decision-making processes?

In an era where storytelling is paramount, contemporary art museums face the ethical challenge of navigating increasingly complex collaborations while fostering meaningful partnerships. This session aims to explore the ethical landscape surrounding collaborative conservation practices and decision-making processes entrusted to others in artists' absence. As multifaceted collaborative projects become increasingly prevalent in contemporary art, it is essential to examine the ethical responsibilities of the stakeholders involved and the implications of working together towards artworks’ integrity and artists' intentions without their direct input. 

We will discuss the principles of equitable collaboration and transparency, highlighting case studies that exemplify successful and unsuccessful collaborations, as well as lessons learned about practice and trust. Through these presentations, we hope to continue mapping dynamic relationships and interdisciplinary approaches in the care of complex works of art, influence changes to these works, and explore new possibilities and trajectories in the artist's absence.

By actively integrating these ethical dimensions, we can improve our collaborative efforts and ensure that conservation serves as an inclusive platform for shared narratives and cultural exchange.

Radioactive Objects in Collections

Kerith Schrager (H&SN + PCN, OSG), 20-minute presentations

Radioactive materials are present in a wide range of collections, including geological and mineral specimens, uranium glass, ceramic glazes, luminous paints, scientific and medical equipment, industrial materials, military objects, and archaeological artifacts. Although radioactive materials are often perceived as inherently dangerous, the actual risk of exposure depends on the type of radiation, the condition of the object, environmental factors, and the tasks being performed. Effective risk management requires understanding both collection materials and exposure pathways to ensure safe handling, storage, exhibition, and access.

This session is the fourth installment in an established and well-attended series focusing on individual hazardous materials commonly found in cultural heritage collections. Participants will be introduced to the diversity of radioactive materials found in collecting organizations through facilitated discussions with collections workers and health and safety professionals on hazard assessment, handling, access, and risk management.

We invite panelists to propose brief case studies illustrating approaches to identifying radioactive objects, conducting exposure assessments, developing handling and storage protocols, communicating risk, and balancing preservation with safe access. Requested topics include object/collection-specific assessments, radiation detection and survey methods, building relationships with safety professionals, and institutional policies for managing radioactive collections within regulatory frameworks. In-depth discussion will follow the presentations.

Mitigating Mold with Trust

Session Chairs: Lisa Goldberg and Eliza Spaulding (PCN)

Mitigating mold is a perennial challenge, often accompanied by layers of decision-making with limited information. As we investigate how to cultivate being a “Community of Trust,” how have we established trust with ourselves, the partners we collaborate with, and the communities we serve about our mold mitigation work? This panel seeks proposals from practitioners and researchers across specialties on one or more of the following topics: 

• Balancing sustainable environmental set points while creating an environment inhospitable for mold growth. 
• Establishing trusted relationships between practitioners and vendors to mitigate mold in collections. 
• Developing criteria to foster trust in oneself that you’ve mitigated mold as effectively as possible. 
• Communicating with individuals or communities about collections that have undergone mold mitigation so they are empowered to handle them safely. 

Building off of past scholarship and annual meeting discussions on mold mitigation, this session aims to deepen our community of practice by focusing on how we create and support trust-based mold mitigation methodologies and relationships. 

A.I. Literacy in Conservation Practice 

Session Chairs: Sarah Reidell and Eliza Spaulding, 20-minute presentations 

As the tools for artificial intelligence (A.I.) continue to evolve rapidly and become integrated into our work, building our capacity to critically evaluate and responsibly use A.I. is increasingly important. This concept, also known as A.I. literacy, forms the foundation for considering what the ethical use of artificial intelligence means to us as cultural heritage practitioners. 

As we reflect on how we embody being a “Community of Trust,” this panel seeks proposals on:

• Frameworks or resources that support the critical, informed, and responsible use of artificial intelligence for cultural heritage work. These might include staff training programs, institutional guidance, or evaluation rubrics.

• Case studies demonstrating how A.I. literacy frameworks or ethical guidelines have been applied in cultural heritage settings. 

• Perspectives on the relationship between A.I. literacy and the development of ethical A.I. standards for the cultural heritage field. These might include reflections on transparency, bias, or sustainability. 

Through a combination of presentations and facilitated discussion, attendees will leave with examples of best practices to support their own journeys with A.I., as well as emerging ideas that we, as a cultural heritage community, may use to shape future ethical standards.

Low-Toxicity and Sustainable Alternatives in Conservation Practice

Session Chairs: Cristiana Acerbi Ginatta, Ahmed Tarek, and Ha Leem Ro (PSG, RATS + ASG)

As efforts to preserve cultural heritage increasingly intersect with broader sustainability initiatives, conservation professionals continue to reexamine the environmental impacts and health risks of certain practices. This session invites proposals that explore practical strategies for reducing environmental impact and toxicity without compromising the quality of care.

Rather than viewing environmental responsibility and preservation ethics as competing priorities, this session demonstrates how to balance them. To provide a comprehensive view of the field's current capabilities and future directions, the session is divided into two distinct but complementary parts.

Part 1: The Clean Clean – Low-Toxicity Conservation in Practice

Focus: Immediate, practical applications and currently available solutions.

This session focuses on practical, immediate changes conservators can make at the bench. Presentations will highlight case studies that exemplify practical applications of greener, or significantly less toxic, solvents and techniques. Presenters will showcase currently available materials and methods, emphasizing how to minimize the impact of treatment materials on both the conservator's health and the environment. This section provides attendees with options they can quickly adopt into their daily practice.

Part 2: Evaluating Alternatives – Experimental Approaches and Bio-Based Materials

Focus: Experimental evaluation, rigorous testing, and emerging alternatives.

This session will focus on the rigorous evaluation of emerging, sustainable alternatives in conservation practice. With a focus on research and testing, this section explores the experimental side of sustainable conservation. Key themes include scientific and experimental evaluation of eco-friendly alternatives to reduce toxicity, improve performance, and ensure compatibility with historic materials, and highlighting how non-destructive analytical techniques used in testing can significantly reduce the environmental footprint of conservation science laboratories or treatment evaluation.

Stabilizing the Surface: Materials and Techniques for Flaking Media

Session Chair: Cristiana Acerbi Ginatta (PSG), 20-minute presentations

Presenters will be encouraged to share both the successes and challenges they have encountered when consolidating flaking materials. Through case studies, conservators will discuss the object's condition, the treatment options considered, the approach selected, and the results.

Navigating Capital Projects and Construction at Your Institution

Session Chair: Davina Kuh Jakobi, 20-minute presentations

Capital projects and construction present unique challenges for conservators, requiring cross-disciplinary collaboration while balancing preservation goals with institutional priorities, project schedules, budgets, public access, and safety considerations. As museums and cultural institutions work to unwind deferred maintenance and undertake increasingly complex renovations, infrastructure upgrades, and preservation initiatives, conservators are often called upon to bridge communication between architects, engineers, contractors, facilities staff, project managers, curators, administrators, and other stakeholders.

This session will explore the conservator’s evolving role throughout the lifecycle of construction projects, from planning and design through construction and project closeout. Presentations may examine communicating conservation priorities to non-conservation professionals, managing risk during active construction, integrating collections care into project planning, responding to unforeseen conditions, and fostering productive interdisciplinary partnerships. Case studies highlighting both successes and lessons learned are encouraged. By sharing practical strategies and real-world experiences, this session will examine how conservators serve to bridge disciplines, advocate for cultural heritage, and contribute to collaborative decision-making throughout complex preservation and construction projects. 

Unearthing Trust: An Archaeology of Conservation and Collection Care

Session Chairs: Chris de Brer (UCLA); Monica Ganio (Getty Conservation Institute-GCI); Susanne Gänsicke (J. Paul Getty Museum); Stavroula Golfomitsou (GCI); Ewout Koek (J. Paul Getty Museum); Ana Pastor Pérez (GCI), 20-minute presentations

Archaeological collections often bear the legacy of conservation treatments applied over decades, many poorly documented or their impact is insufficiently understood today. This session intends to explore how the study of past conservation treatments can inform the management and preservation of archaeological collections. Past interventions, while intended to stabilize objects, may also influence long term preservation, alter material behavior, and affect how collections respond to environmental conditions. At the same time, guided by initiatives such as the Bizot Green Protocol, museums and heritage institutions are increasingly seeking preventive conservation strategies that are evidence-based, sustainable, and adaptable to diverse collection contexts. Understanding the impact of past treatments from interdisciplinary perspectives is essential for developing effective and sustainable preventive conservation strategies. We are interested in innovative and interdisciplinary dialogues and approaches to documenting treatment histories, assessing collection environments, identifying treatment residues and degradation patterns, and evaluating interactions between original materials, conservation materials, and environmental factors. By examining both successes and challenges in addressing legacy treatments, participants will explore practical and scalable approaches to advance a shared framework for understanding how past conservation decisions can inform more resilient, sustainable, and evidence-based collection care in the future.

Note about Joint Sessions

We have two joint sessions that have been proposed, but additional joint and thematic sessions will be created based on the open call for papers. Authors that select specialty sessions for their papers may be part of additional joint or thematic sessions. 

Community Stewardship and Long-term Management of Archaeological and Historic Sites

Session Chairs: Alyssa Rina (AHN), Ella Andrews (AHN), and Ha Leem Ro (ASG)

The Archaeology Heritage Network and the Architecture Specialty Group are proposing a joint session exploring how local knowledge and community stewardship can support the sustainable management, preservation, and treatment of archaeological and historical sites. The long-term management of these sites requires the collaboration of multidisciplinary teams, shared decision-making, and oftentimes, creative and geographically specific solutions. Equally important are the networks of trust between conservation professionals, local communities, and stakeholders that sustain preservation efforts over time.

This joint session will promote talks that address sustainable site and architectural preservation in relation to local capacity building, funding strategies, adaptive reuse, locally sourced materials, and innovative solutions to sites with limited resources. Though this session focuses on the sustainable management of sites through community networks, talks that incorporate environmentally conscious strategies within networks of trust are still highly encouraged. 

In-situ Photogrammetry for Site-Specific Sites and Monumental Objects

Session Chairs: Keats Webb (IWG), Tessa de Alarcon (IWG), and Ha Leem Ro (ASG)

Photogrammetry can be considered a low-barrier technique that offers flexibility in setup, equipment, and acquisition and is being used across media to support conservation documentation—documenting condition, informing treatment, and increasing understanding of manufacture and materials. The technique’s flexibility and portability allow it to be used for very small and very large objects, including architectural features and buildings, and for in situ recording, offering both opportunities and challenges. This joint session focuses on scale and in situ photogrammetry, with presentations that provide practical setups, workflows, and solutions for imaging architectural spaces and elements, buildings and sites, or monumental objects in less-than-ideal capture environments. 

LACDG: Stewardship of library and archival materials (temporary title) 

Session Chairs: Savannah Adams Deutsch and Melina Avery (BPG), 10-minute presentations + panel

The Libraries and Archives Conservation Discussion Group (LACDG) is an annual forum for conservation professionals to discuss, collaborate, and delve into a particular topic within the realm of library and archives collections care. In keeping with AIC 2027 theme, Community of Trust: how trust is established, maintained, challenged, and renewed, LACDG will provide a welcoming environment for participants to ask questions and share ideas regarding the stewardship of library and archival materials. During this session, panelists will briefly present their institutions and their work, followed by a moderated discussion where attendees will be invited to ask questions and share insights and experiences. 

Art on Paper: Discussion Topics TBD

Session Chair: Emma Hartman (BPG)

The Art on Paper Discussion Group is intended as a space to highlight issues of interest to conservators of works of art on paper and to foster open discussion with colleagues. A theme will be determined by the co-chairs, and the session will consist of brief, informal talks followed by open conversation and questions. 

About Luncheon Sessions

Below are the proposed luncheon sessions that are open to submissions; note that attendees will be able to register for one luncheon as part of their meeting registration. There will be additional luncheon sessions that are invited panels or other formats. These sessions will be from 12pm to 1:45pm on either Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday during the conference. Presentations are usually short, with panel or interactive elements incorporated.

Objects Conservation Tips Session 

Session Chair: Ellen Promise (OSG), 5- to 7-minute presentations

The Objects Specialty Group (OSG) is hosting a Tips Session and Lunch. All attendees who engage in object conservation are invited to gather for a meal in a more informal setting to share and discuss useful tips. Tips might include useful tools, treatment procedures and workflows, recipe adjustments, materials, or other such creative solutions that colleagues have developed while caring for objects. Of particular interest are low-cost alternatives to expensive equipment, low-tech analytical tools or procedures, and easy- or free-access technological resources that objects conservators can use.

Each presentation will be 5 to 7 minutes long and will include a multimedia video, a PowerPoint presentation, and/or on-site examples and demonstrations. Additionally, we will be publishing the tips as part of OSG's postprints. 

Swap Shop: Practical Tips from Paper and Photograph Conservators

Session Chairs: Aisha Wahab, Erin Hammeke, Nayla Maaruf, Mirasol Estrada  (BPG + PMG), 5- to 7-minute presentations

Photograph and paper conservation frequently overlap, whether through shared materials and treatment approaches or the responsibilities of conservators working across institutional and private practice. Ever wished you could swap treatment tips with a photograph or paper conservator?

This collaborative lunch session, co-hosted by the Book and Paper Group and the Photographic Materials Group, brings together paper and photograph conservators for a series of 5–10-minute presentations highlighting practical techniques, tools, materials, and lessons learned across specialties. By sharing successes, challenges, and innovative approaches, presenters will demonstrate how methods from one discipline can inform another and expand the knowledge and skills of both professional communities.

We invite conservators from each specialty to present practical experiences that may benefit colleagues working with photographs, paper, or both. Topics may include anecdotes about mounting and housing, surface-cleaning tips, adventures with adhered photographs, successes and failures in inpainting and infill, trouble with photo albums, foxing solutions, and wins and losses in cleaning water-sensitive media. The session aims to foster dialogue, encourage collaboration, and provide attendees with practical ideas they can adapt to their own conservation practice.

Imaging Tips Session

Session Chairs: Tessa de Alarcon and Keats Webb (IWG), 5- to 7-minute presentations

Imaging crosses all specialty groups and is a critical part of conservation documentation. Our labs and studios include old and new tools and techniques – what are your tips, tricks, and tools that help tackle imaging projects to support conservation documentation? These practical, cost-effective, and creative solutions can focus on traditional or innovative tools, techniques, or setups, a combination, low-tech or high-tech, or somewhere in between. We want to offer our community the opportunity to share practical solutions through short presentations (5-7 min) on useful imaging-related tips, tricks, and tools.

Tips for Better Documentation in Private Practice

Session Chairs: Adriana Benavides (PSG) and Eric Thomas (CIPP), 5- to 7-minute presentations

The Paintings Specialty Group (PSG) and the Conservators in Private Practice (CIPP) present a tips session focused on sharing the organizational workflow habits and tools of working practitioners. Ideally, this session will help individuals in private practice at all stages of their careers build confidence and gain new ideas for running their business and keeping track of their many types of files and documentation. 

Some topics of interest include: 

• Preferred software to organize digital files/information (inquiries, treatment projects, images, non-treatment projects) with use case examples or database walkthroughs. Software examples: Notion, Google Sheets, Excel, etc. 
• How do practitioners track work hours and treatment steps: pen and paper, online table, kanban boards, among other tools.
• Other useful software, hardware, or organizational habits that make running a business smoother. 

Shared Stewardship: An Asset-Based Future for Preventive Conservation

Session Chairs: Robert Waller, Jane Henderson, and Lisa Goldberg (PCN), presentation length TBD

Managing collections risks is only part of preventive conservation; this perspective is limited by its deficit-based approach of identifying and solving problems. Cultivating assets such as relationships, knowledge, trust, and community capacity enables professionals to care for heritage collectively and effectively. This session will build on the 2026 CAC-AIC conference session and its follow-up webinar “Shifting Perspectives on Damage, Change, and Value” by considering three themes:

• Beyond Risk: An Asset-Based Approach to Preventive Conservation
  Moving from risk management to capacity building through a focus on asset-based approaches, leveraging available organizational expertise and communities’ knowledge, and long-term sustainability.
• Preventive Conservation Through Relationships: Building Trust, Capacity, and Care
  Building bridges between siloed allied professionals and between institutions and communities, improving mutual understanding and sharing of responsibilities across disciplines, and relying on collaboration.
• Developing and Valuing All Assets Supporting Preventive Conservation
  What other assets could we cultivate to support broadly Asset-Based Preventive Conservation Development? Consider assets including: community knowledge, local networks, volunteers, cultural practices, institutional memory, partnerships, shared values, curiosity and public engagement, and others.

By expanding our understanding of what constitutes conservation infrastructure, we foster a more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable approach to stewardship. 

On Writing in Conservation

Session Chair: Tiarna Doherty, panel: 1-2 abstracts are welcome to join the planned panel

Taking inspiration from Peter N. Miller’s On Conservation as a Human Science (2026), this panel explores how the conservation field can support a more expansive, inclusive, and confident culture of authorship.

The professionalization of conservation within the academy has established writing conventions that have served the field well for more than 50 years. Treatment reports, technical studies, and scientific publications remain essential to documenting practice and advancing scholarship. At the same time, if writing shapes how knowledge is created, shared, and valued, are our established modes of professional communication conveying the full range of perspectives that conservators bring to the study of material culture? What insights do conservators provide when writing as historians, interpreters, and scholars?

Panelists will discuss the opportunities and challenges of adapting their expertise for diverse audiences, the strategies they employ to communicate complex material in accessible ways, and how these projects have influenced their scholarship and conservation practice. In addition, it will address the ways in which writing itself shapes the visibility and influence of conservation. 

Moments of Care: Relational Practices in Preservation and Conservation

Session Chair: Alia Levar Wegner, 5–7 minute lightning talks 

This luncheon session seeks proposals for the 2027 AIC Annual Meeting reflecting the theme, Community of Trust. We invite 5–7 minute lightning talks centered on a specific “moment of care” from preservation or conservation work that will serve as starting points for discussion and participatory activities throughout the luncheon.

Conservators and preservation professionals are embedded within broader networks of knowledge, responsibility, and care. This session brings those relationships into focus through small, concrete practices that show how trust, reciprocity, listening, and relational accountability inform our work with cultural heritage materials and the people and communities who entrust them to our care.

A moment of care might include tenderly rehousing family photographs with community members, making space for storytelling during treatment, adapting analysis or handling practices in response to community knowledge, or developing a participatory documentation process that reflects shared authority. It might also be a moment of uncertainty, tension, or failure that changed how you understand responsible care.

Proposals should focus on one encounter, decision, practice, or turning point and reflect on what it revealed about the relationships surrounding conservation work. Together, these talks will consider what relational accountability looks like across the spectrum of preservation and conservation—from material analysis and conservation science to treatment, digitization, community engagement, repatriation, and long-term stewardship—and how different professional roles are embedded within shared networks of care.

Abstract submissions should be a minimum of 250 words.

Poster or Poster Plus Flash Presentation

We welcome posters on many topics of interest to our field, and will feature some posters in a 5-minute flash presentation with a large general audience. If you would like to present your research in this way, please select Poster with Flash Presentation as your desired presentation type.

Accepted posters will have a designated area in the Exhibit Hall and will be assigned a number. The Poster Session will be open only during Exhibit Hall hours: Wednesday from 9am to 5:30pm and Thursday from 9am to 5:30pm. 

There will be a designated time on Thursday for the poster author Q&A in the Exhibit Hall. You will need to be near your poster to discuss your research with attendees. 

Please make sure you remove your poster by Thursday at 5:30pm or it may be lost when the boards are taken back. 

Community of Trust

For this meeting, we will reflect on how trust is established, maintained, challenged, and renewed. Our gathering together at the Annual Meeting should be built on trust, and that current is what carries us towards new ways of examining our own practice and how our work shapes the way histories are interpreted and shared. It’s trust in one another’s expertise, the evidence that informs our decisions, the institutions we work within, the lived experiences of our colleagues, and the relationships we cultivate. It is also important to consider how conservators earn and maintain trust across disciplines and communities through collaboration, transparency, and accountability. Trust also motivates us to seek out what we may lack and acknowledge that care for our heritage is often carried out beyond our traditional professional boundaries. We will explore how trust influences conservation, strengthens our connections, and reinforces our collective dedication to uplifting one another.

Climate, Sustainability, and Equity

Building trust by examining and redefining the barriers and successes in balancing environmental responsibility and awareness, and in caring for and providing access to collections, buildings, and site-specific tangible and intangible heritage. This includes object treatment, stewardship of historic structures and material fabric, indoor air quality, HVAC operations, exhibition strategies, energy and waste reduction, adaptive reuse, and the decolonization of museum and preservation standards. Examples that highlight creative and local solutions from institutions or geographies of limited resources are highly encouraged.

Intangible and Community-Based Heritage

Building trust by taking direction from community priorities, listening actively, embedding diverse forms of knowledge and stewardship in conservation, and emphasizing support for local groups that care for local heritage and archives. Examples that include working with archives, contemporary objects, artist archives, historic societies, land trusts, and regional and site-specific museums are especially encouraged.

Professional Life Cycle

Building trust by cultivating a field that values knowledge transfer, career resilience, mutual support, cultivating confidence as a practitioner, and training and educating future leaders and administrators. We invite discussions on professional development, leadership and managerial skills, institutional relationships, succession planning, progressive learning models, and intergenerational learning.

Ethics of Working Together

Building trust amid the negotiation of competing priorities, navigating uncertainty, elevating shared decision-making, building support networks across disciplines, and forming and managing multidisciplinary teams for large projects. Examples that highlight the balancing of client goals, professional responsibility, and conservation, as well as collaboration with artists, their descendants, and estates on treatment, preservation, and documentation, are encouraged.

Centering Work in Progress and New Technologies

Building trust through the sharing of active treatments, ongoing investigations, emerging tools and techniques, and critically assessing the quality and limitations of evidence-based work. This includes the importance of framing meaningful questions that guide the selection of an appropriate treatment method or scientific analysis. We welcome presentations that explore how new approaches complement, refine, or challenge established practices and connoisseurship, as well as discussions on the ethics of research and data collection.

Review Committees

Wide member participation in the abstract review process for all sessions is essential for creating a successful program. A number of committees (comprised of our members) review submitted abstracts.

Specialty- and Network-sponsored sessions usually have review committees comprised of the elected officers of a particular specialty group or network and chaired by the group’s program chair. General, Poster, and Pre-sessions each have their own committees. The board's vice president chairs these committees and serves as overall program chair for the meeting. The vice president appoints members to serve on these committees with the aim of representing a diversity of approaches and expertise within the conservation field.

Process

Committee members read each abstract, discuss its merits, and consider its potential place in the final program. We are fortunate to receive many high quality abstracts each year. In general, we receive many more abstracts than we can accommodate in the final program. While deliberations of each review committee are strictly confidential, authors may request further information from the meetings staff in the case of rejected submissions. 

We have prepared the guides below to help you create and shape an abstract for our conference.

English

Guide for Authors on Acknowledging Indigenous or Contested Cultural Heritage 

Authorship and AIC Annual Meeting Presentations and Posters

Abstract Review Guidelines

Tips for Writing an Effective AIC Annual Meeting Abstract

Spanish

Consejos Para Redactar Un Resumen Eficaz de la Reunion Anual de la AIC 

Autoria de las Presentaciones y Posteres en la Reunion Anual del AIC

Arabic

Tips for Writing an Effective AIC Annual Meeting Abstract (Arabic)

Authorship and AIC Annual Meeting Presentations and Posters (Arabic)