Washington Conservation Guild, April Meeting Summary
1 April 2021
Summarized by Sarah Montonchaikul
4th year Graduate Intern in Objects Conservation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Lunder Conservation Center
For its April 2021 meeting, the Washington Conservation Guild virtually hosted Jeanelle Austin, Lead Caretaker and Founding Board Member of the George Floyd Global Memorial, and Acoma Gaither, Advanced Fellow in Racial Justice Collections Care.
Jeanelle Austin began caring for the memorial at East 38th and Chicago Avenue (named George Floyd Square by the community) in the first week after the murder of George Floyd, seeing her
work as both social resistance and an act of self-care. On May 26th, 2020, people gathered to grieve at the site near to the location where Floyd was killed; a place deemed sacred by the community. This act follows in the tradition of public commemoration often practiced by the Black community, where memorials are built at locations where individuals have died. Not only would people bring offerings to lay in this sacred place, but also offer their protest signs after having participated in demonstrations. In the following days and months, the community developed the George Floyd Memorial to be a place to honor Floyd’s memory, to bear witness to his murder, and to commemorate the horrific number of other unjust killings of Black people by the police.
The George Floyd Global Memorial contains five elements as described by Austin: community, liberation, public grief, pilgrimage, and protest. Collections care activities support and sustain these five elements, promoting the preservation of objects as diverse as large-scale outdoor sculptures to the duties of night caretakers who light the Mourning Passage with candles. Conservation practice has been incorporated into Jeanelle Austin’s efforts, informing decisions such as bringing offerings indoors and stabilizing them as well as thinking about their display in the future.
In her Advanced Fellowship in Racial Justice Collections Care, Acoma Gaither brings her experience in heritage studies and public history to her practice. “A Black sense of space requires situating historical and contemporary struggles against white oppression,” Gaither stated in her presentation. She has spent her fellowship participating in the preservation efforts of the George Floyd Global Memorial, learning about mold remediation and having discussions about the ethics of cleaning highly personal, highly functional, almost ritualistic objects.
Conservation is an extremely white space. In their generosity by sharing their experiences, Jeanelle Austin and Acoma Gaither spoke about their circumstances with the principles of conservation as well as their practical implementation of preservation strategy. The evening’s presentation was a profound mediation on what it means “to come into the work of collections care within the context of Black liberation, building memory out of protests,” as Austin put it.
Venue: virtual presentation
HEAD COUNT: 150 participants
