RSVP required by November 8, 2024

Saturday, November 16, 2024
9:30 am – 4pm

Naval Lodge No. 4
330 Pennsylvania Ave, DC 20003

Transportation: Metro (Orange/Blue/Silver) to Eastern Market

The Washington Conservation Guild is pleased to announce our first Private Practice Seminar since 2000! This all-day seminar aims to provide invaluable insights and discussions tailored to conservators in private practice. This seminar offers a rare opportunity to gain insights from seasoned professionals and network with peers in the field. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or starting out, this event will support your journey in private practice. See the attached PDF for the schedule and additional details!

Morning session: Presentations focused on contracting essentials, legal entity setup, business insurance, and taxation. Q&As after each session, and a roundtable before a group lunch.

Afternoon session: Panelists in private practice will share their experience setting up a practice, working with contracts and subcontractors, and provide their unique insights. Q&A will be open for the audience before breaking for coffee and a tips session. Do you have a favorite organizational app, tool, or trick? Feel free to share it in the RSVP and at the seminar!

This is an in-person event with limited space

WCG Members: $15 | WCG ECP members: $10 | 2024/2025 WCG Williston recipients: FREE
Non-Members: $50

RSVP required for everyone by November 8, 2024 using this Google form: https://forms.gle/Lmsziq51RHh5UNpL7

2024/2025 WCG season memberships are $35 for professionals, $25 for renewing emerging professionals, and free to emerging professionals who are entering their first season as a WCG member.
Join or renew at www.washingtonconservationguild.org/membership.

Morning Sessions:

Casey Wigglesworth is Vice President of Programs at Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency. She joined HTB in April 2002 and has held a variety of roles at HTB. Casey currently manages HTB’s Fine Art and Musical Instrument specialty insurance programs. As such is responsible for supervising the Enterprise Business Unit which includes HTB’s Conservator Insurance Program.

Lauren Anne Horelick has been an objects conservator at NASM since 2012. She has a BFA in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, a BA in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware, and an MA in archaeological and ethnographic conservation from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)/Getty Conservation Master’s program. Lauren completed graduate internships at the Alaska State Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. She also served as the Andrew W. Mellon Postgraduate Fellow in Objects Conservation at Smithsonian, National Museum of the American Indian. Lauren’s research interests include studying the effects of adhesives on cultural materials, diagnostic imaging, and exploring cross-disciplinary adaptive treatment techniques for ephemeral technological materials. Prior to becoming an objects conservator Lauren worked in the field of architectural restoration as a sculptor and mold maker.

Janet Fries protects and champions creative expression by artists, filmmakers, authors and others. She seeks to ensure that clients, both individual artists and corporations operating in entertainment and the arts, reap the rights and benefits afforded to them under U.S. and global intellectual property laws through negotiation, mediation and litigation. A trained fine art photographer herself and a leader in the community of lawyers who serve artists, Janet is immersed in the field both personally and professionally.

Janet prepares and negotiates contracts, reviews websites and advises on copyright and trademark protection, brand management and related matters for authors, artists, collectors, Estates of artists and collectors, art organizations, musicians, filmmakers and producers, and Internet companies. She also provides counsel on entertainment law and internet law

Tia Cantrell hails from the Republic of Georgia and brings over 15 years of expertise in accounting, financial, and tax services for small businesses and individuals. She began her career in government internal auditing before moving into project and program management, where she successfully led large-scale financial software implementations and resolved complex issues across various teams and departments. Tia founded North Bethesda CPA to provide a comprehensive approach to finance, customizing her services to maximize value for her clients

Afternoon Sessions:

Connie Stromberg is a conservator specializing in the assessment and conservation of sculpture, outdoor sculpture, decorative arts and historic objects for museums, government agencies and private collectors mainly in the Washington DC and Baltimore area. Current or recent clients include Smithsonian Museums such as The National Museum of African American History and Culture, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian. Other institutional clients include: The U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives and Records Administration, The U.S. Supreme Court, The State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms, and Dumbarton Oaks Museum. Recent outdoor sculpture conservation projects include bronze and other sculptural materials at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Western Pennsylvania and at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and DC.

Stromberg graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA degree in sculpture in 1978 and with an MS from the Winterthur/ University of Delaware Art Conservation Program in 1986. She lived and worked abroad for 14 years in Nepal, Barbados, Ecuador, and Peru, while her husband was in the Foreign Service with USAID and upon her return in 2001 established Stromberg Conservation, LLC. She often collaborates with other area conservators on projects.

Julia M. Brennan, established Washington DC-based Caring for Textiles in 1998. The team specializes in the preservation of a wide range of textiles – treatment, storage, display, outreach and workshops, for individuals and institutions.

Since 2000, Julia has led multiple workshops in Asia and Africa, prioritizing a grassroots approach for conservation and education. One outcome is the publication “Our Ancestors Knew Best”, chronicling traditional SEA textile preservation knowledge for present day museum application. In Rwanda and Cambodia, she developed site-specific community-based protocols for triage and long-term care of textile materials of mass atrocities.

BA from Barnard College, Columbia U, and MA in art crime from Association for Research in Crimes Against Art. www.caringfortextiles.com

Anna Erşenkal is a paintings conservator and the President of District Art Conservation, LLC, a private conservation studio that serves museums, galleries, and private clients in the Washington, DC metro area. In addition to her private studio, Anna is currently the contract paintings conservator at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. As a DC native, Anna is passionate about serving public collections and has worked with institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Hirshhorn, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. During her time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she worked collaboratively with colleagues at the Barnes Foundation and Phillips Collection to broaden the technical understanding of Picasso’s “Blue Period” paintings, specifically by imaging works that had lower compositions. Anna holds an M.A. and C.A.S. in Art Conservation specializing in painting conservation from the State University of New York at Buffalo State University and is an active member of the American Institute for Conservation.

Howard Wellman is an objects conservator in private practice specializing in historic cemetery monuments, outdoor sculpture and public art. He received a BA in Theatre Arts from Cornell University in 1986, an MA in Archaeology from Boston University in 1994, and his conservation degree from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London in 1996.  

He worked on overseas archaeological projects as Field and Chief Conservators in Turkey and Egypt from 1996 to 1999.  In the US, he was Lead (then Head) Conservator at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory from 1999 to 2007. 

He founded Wellman Conservation LLC in 2007.  Current clients include among others the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, the Maryland Military Monuments Commission, Historic Congressional Cemetery, and private collectors. 

He is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation and an ex-officer of the Washington Conservation Guild and the AIC Objects Specialty Group.

He lives south of Baltimore in the Relay Historic District and maintains an 1890’s Victorian-era home in his spare time.