Ring 3: MAKING CONNECTIONS

“APOYOnline: Looking to the Past and Towards the Future”
Presented by Leah Bright, Objects Conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Treasurer at APOYOnline

Summarized by Adrian Hernandez, WCG IDEA Action Committee member and first-year conservation student at NYU

As part of the “Making Connections” ring at the 2023 WCG 3-Ring Circus event, Leah Bright presented an overview of the history and future of APOYOnline – Association for Heritage Preservation of the Americas. Founded in 1989, APOYOnline is a small nonprofit whose mission is “to promote communication, exchange, and professional development in the field of heritage preservation in the Americas, the Caribbean, and in Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries.” Leah Bright currently serves on the board of APOYOnline as Treasurer and is an objects conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

In the first few years, the organization was created to connect Spanish and Portuguese speaking conservators, to expand the accessibility of conservation news and research by translating documents into their respective languages, and to distribute a newsletter to their membership. By 2009, the organization decided to focus on building out its online presence. More recently, APOYOnline received two $100,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grants to make the nonprofit more robust and ensure its longevity. Subsequent initiatives include: refining the mission statement to encompass three core tenets,“connect, empower, transform”; launching a new logo; expanding the Board to include 5 members plus the President and training these Board members; expanding the volunteer workforce into 12 working groups; providing grant-funded support for Latin American professionals to attend the AIC annual meeting; and organizing regional conferences. To illustrate the success of this increase in scope, Leah cited an impressive stat: “over 1,000 professionals from 27 countries have received professional training from APOYOnline.”

In the future, APOYOnline hopes to establish a distance-learning platform on their website. This would allow them to reach a more diverse and broader audience, especially those professionals who cannot afford to attend conferences. They are also organizing more regional conferences and internship opportunities. Leah ended her talk by stating that APOYOnline is always looking for volunteers and fundraising ideas.

A recording of this presentation is available on WCG’s YouTube Account.