The Washington Conservation Guild is pleased to provide this slate of candidates for the 2026-2027 season. All positions will have the opportunity to renew for an additional one or two year term. Feel free to write in a candidate on your ballot if you feel another individual best represents your WCG priorities.

The ballot will be emailed to the membership and voting will occur only via this ballot (not in person or via mail). If you have any questions, please contact the Nominating committee at nominating@washingtonconservationguild.org.

Voting closes at 11:59 pm on Wednesday May 13, 2026.

Slate of Candidates

Candidate for President (two year term):

Sara Becker holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Delaware’s undergraduate program in art conservation, minoring in art history and religious studies. She gained pre-program book and paper work experience at the Smithsonian American History Museum, Winterthur Library, and the National Park Service. In the fall of 2023, she graduated with distinction from West Dean College’s Master’s program in the conservation of books and library materials. Her MA thesis project investigated the ethics and values behind treating objects, particularly books, that have been damaged during armed conflict. This topic remains a great research interest of hers. Post-graduation she spent 2+ years at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC treating records for digitization, exhibit, and researcher use. She currently works at the National Park Service’s Harpers Ferry Center as a Post-Graduate Fellow in Book and Paper Conservation treating volumes from the Russian Bishop House in Sitka National Historical Park.

Sara has served on the Washington Conservation Guild Board for two seasons (2024-2026), first as the Social Media Chair, and then as Vice President. She looks forward to the opportunity to bring WCG into its 60th (!) year of hosting cultural heritage professionals to promote the exchange of experiences and innovation.

Candidate for Vice President (two year term):

Pamela Kirschner is a Wooden Artifact Conservator specializing in Frank Lloyd Wright finishes on furniture, wood paneling and exterior finishes on wood for almost thirty years and has a Master of Science degree from the University of Delaware/ Winterthur Museum Art Conservation program. She has served as Director on the boards of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Washington Conservation Guild. She is a Professional Associate with the American Institute of Conservation (AIC) and has worked with historic sites and institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery and the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites. Pamela is currently a Preservation Specialist at the National Archives and Records Administration.

Candidate for Membership Secretary (two year term):

Alice Craigie is the Modern Painting Fellow 2022-2026 at The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.  She completed her Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel Paintings at The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2019. Since, Alice has worked at Julia Nagle Conservation, London’s foremost modern and contemporary conservation studio, and Tate Gallery, London as Assistant Conservator. During her fellowship, she has undertaken practical conservation treatments, alongside a revised technical study of the twelve Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) paintings that form part of the Gallery’s Chester Dale collection.

Candidate for Recording Secretary (two year term):

Kevin Barni is the current Preservation Planner for New Castle County, Delaware. Over the course of his 15-year career he has undertaken preservation work throughout the Mid-Atlantic, with a brief stopover in New York City. He received both his B.A. in Art Conservation and M.A. in Historic Preservation from the University of Delaware. He has worked in several positions at the local and state level in roles ranging from public history as the Coordinator of Delaware’s Historical Marker Program to working as an Architectural Historian for a Cultural Resource Management firm that took on large scale development projects along the East Coast. Most recently he has returned home to Delaware as the Preservation Planner for New Castle County where he organizes the County’s Historic Review Board (which includes transcribing all meeting minutes), works on strengthening the County’s preservation ordinances, and works with residents and developers to help them better understand, and hopefully get excited about, their historic resources.

He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Delaware Preservation Fund, which is a small non-profit organization that awards small grants for historic preservation. He is also a Committee Member for the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Orlando Rideout Fieldwork Fellowship which supports students and VAF members in their field-based research and documentation projects.

His current research interest includes the historic landscapes of mushroom farms and the worker’s history embedded in them. In his down time, he is an avid knitter with a deep love of textiles who has been known to spin and dye his own yarn. He enjoys scouring thrift and antique stores for vintage lamps and lighters to restore. He’s also an incredibly slow runner with dreams of one day completing a marathon. 

Candidate for Meeting Director (two year term):

Rylan Nguyen graduated from Tufts University with a BA in Art History and a minor in Studio Art. She is especially interested in how art conservation, with material science, can support provenance recovery for at-risk objects from vulnerable communities with fragmented historiography. In her artistic practice, she investigates historical art materials and techniques in painting, papermaking, bookmaking, and printmaking, exploring themes such as the eternal return of history, the antithesis of self, and the Buddhist doctrine of Pratītyasamutpāda (interdependent origination). Rylan previously interned at Silklab (Tufts University), a biomedical engineering lab focused on silk biomaterials, and at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens (Miami, FL) for Collections Care. She will start her Nord Network Junior Fellowship in Conservation at the Cleveland Museum of Art in September 2026.

Appointed Board Member for Website Administrator

Liz Peirce is the Objects Conservator at the Library of Congress, where she cares for a diverse 3D collection ranging from 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets to contemporary plastics. After relocating to the DC area in 2021, she quickly became an active member of the Washington Conservation Guild (WCG). She has served in several capacities—including Meeting Director, Videographer, and Member Events Coordinator—and is eager to continue supporting the community as Website Administrator. Beyond the lab, Liz is likely found rock climbing, attempting to run, or curled up with a book and one of her cats. 

Appointed Board Member for Outreach Support

Kayla Henry-Griffin (they/them) considers themselves an audiovisual archivist and a time-based media conservator (and various other titles). They are a Media Collection Specialist for the Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) located at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. They attended New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program, where they studied preservation and conservation of audiovisual materials, community archiving, and video game preservation. Both Kayla’s personal interests and professional interests mesh well together- CRTs, memory, farming and fishing games, knitting patterns, music, and other related topics. Their personal research is extensive- covering memory’s ties to family roots to preservation of lore and mechanics in video games. Kayla’s preservation and conservation experience spans across a myriad of small and large collections- from cataloging and assessing magnetic media to conducting digital preservation on time-based media artworks.