All Things Useful and Ornamental: A Praxis-based Model for Conservation Education

Conservation has matured into a professional discipline with its own body of knowledge, practical methodology and professional community of practitioners and educators. Conservation does not assume a priori a singular dedication to the physical fabric alone but rather to the entire resource including the associated intangible qualities, thus bringing the conservation process back into the social realm of people, places and things. In order to train skilled conservators in the physical and ethical exigencies of cultural heritage conservation, it is necessary to unite theory with practice. The University of Pennsylvania and the US National Park Service entered into a collaborative partnership in 1991 to explore the mutual needs for applied research and training in conservation and cultural resource management. This institutional collaboration has allowed a critical component of the professional training of conservators to be realized while providing much-needed service to park sites. It has brought field-based problems into the academy where research protocols have been developed, tested and then re-introduced back into the field and most importantly it has exposed students to the complexities of ethical behaviour and professional conduct.