Debra Hess NorrisVice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education Henry Francis du Pont Chair in Fine Arts Newark, DE 19716
As project director of The Andrew W. Mellon Collaborative Workshops in Photograph Conservation (since 1989), she is responsible for the development of week-long workshops on topics of central importance to the photographic conservation field, involving conservators, scientists, curators, artists, and scholars. Recent workshops have included: Contemporary Photographic and Digital Materials (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), Mounting and Unmounting of Historic Photographic Print Materials (International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House), Compensation for Loss (J. Paul Getty Museum), and Photographic Processes of the Photo-Secession (The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)
She has consulted on the care and preservation of photographic collections throughout the world, most recently in Australia and Russia, and lectured widely on this and other topics. She is an enthusiastic fund raiser and lectures frequently on fund raising for collections care. With Winterthur Museum & Country Estate she led an 18-month Hurricane Katrina response and recovery initiative (funded by the Mellon Foundation with significant in-kind support from Winterthur and UD) working with cultural institutions on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Debra is strongly committed to the importance of public education about preservation and increasing awareness to insure that family treasures are preserved for the enrichment of future generations.
She is Chairman of the Board for the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, one of two nonprofit regional conservation centers in the United States that specialize in the conservation and preservation of paper-based artifacts. She also serves as Chairperson of Heritage Preservation, the National Institute for Conservation and serves on the Getty Foundation Advisory Council and the National Archives and Records Administration Preservation Advisory Committee. She is past-president (1993-97) of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) and Fellow in the same organization. She received a Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award for her service to AIC in 1998 and the Sheldon and Caroline Keck Award (also from AIC) in 2004 for outstanding teaching. In 1990-93, she chaired the AIC Ethics and Standards Committee which developed a revised Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice for the profession. In 2005, she was appointed to the US National Commission to UNESCO where she now serves on the Executive Committee.
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