VCA’s First Member’s Meeting in 2026 at VCU’s James Branch Cabell Library in Richmond
VCA’s January Member’s Meeting will be held at James Branch Cabell Library in Richmond featuring presentations from current third-year graduate students. Please take a moment to RSVP . As a special bonus for this meeting, VCU's Library Collections Care program and student interns will be highlighted earlier in the evening! If you plan to attend the meeting, be sure to take note of the parking information below. We hope to see you there!
When:
Thursday, January 22nd
4:00pm – 7:00pm
Where:
James Branch Cabell Library
Monroe Park Campus
901 Park Ave.
Richmond, VA 23284-2033
Our January Member’s Meeting will be hosted in Richmond at the VCU Libraries and feature presentations from three Graduate Conservation Interns: Binh-An Nguyen, Preventative Conservation Intern at Colonial Williamsburg, Paola Valentin Irizarry, Objects Intern at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Tatiana Shannon, Paintings Intern also at the VMFA. We are excited to be partnering with VCU to open this event up to their students as a way to introduce the field to the next generation of conservators.
4:00 - 5:00 Open House for VCU Library Collections Care, Room 231
5:00 - 6:00 Refreshments, Room 250
6:00 – 7:00 Presentations, Room 250
Parking: (see attached map)
VCU's Cabell Library is on the Monroe Park Campus. The closest paid visitor parking decks are the West Broad Street Deck, the West Main Street Deck, or the West Cary Street Deck. More information can be found on VCU's Visitor Parking website, including rates, locations, and instructions on how to pay. You can also check the VCU Parking & Transportation website for some additional areas that also have pay-by-space meters.
Some streets surrounding Cabell offer 3 hour metered parking, such as Floyd Ave and Park Ave, however, these spots can be limited based on availability. Keep an eye out on parking signs, since most of the street parking surrounding Cabell is 1 hour parking.
And lastly, if you are interested in free parking with no time limitations about a 10 minute walk away, it can be find on: portions of Cary St, Main Street (between Plum St and Harvie St), as well as sides streets between Cary St and Main St (e.g. S Brunswick St, S Randolph St, S Harvie St, S Plum St, and S Lombardy St). Just be sure to double check parking signs and you should be good!
Binh-An Nguyen’s talk Preventive Conservation Theory: A Roadmap for What Preventive Conservation Entails and What It Could Be highlights the main themes of preventive conservation and how they are connected to one another to develop a foundation of what its practice entails. Within the past few years, formalization of preventive as both a designated major in master’s degree programs and as a role in institutions within the United States has been on the rise. The new developments in educational methodologies have prompted questions of what preventive conservation entails, what preventive conservators do, and how curriculum and institutional positions can be integrated into currently existing systems. Future work is planned in the next few years to expand upon the theory and create a resource guide to document preventive conservation practices around the world. The Preventive Conservation Theory serves to describe and expand upon what preventive does, while the resource guide will illustrate how preventive work is being done, and provide some guidance to other institutions working to set up their own preventive conservation positions and departments.
Binh-An Nguyen is a preventive conservation graduate fellow at the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC). She is currently completing her third-year internship at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in their Preventive Conservation department.
Paola Marie Valentín Irizarry’s talk, Conserving Islamic Ceramics from the Buffalo Museum of Science, presents a comparative technical and conservation study of three Islamic ceramics. The study investigates the materials and fabrication technologies of each object while documenting the layered histories of excavation, collecting, and restoration that have shaped their current forms. Paola is a current graduate student specializing in objects conservation in the Garman Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State University.
Paola holds a BA in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico and an MA in Archaeology from the Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, and is currently completing her third-year graduate internship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Her experience includes work at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and in private practice.
Tatiana Shannon’s talk, Hopper's Paintbox: Characterizing Modern Oil Paints through Instrumental Analysis, is her 2nd-year graduate research project, co-authored with Catherine Matsen, andinvestigates the palette of American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Instrumental analysis has been carried out on paint samples taken from eighteen tubes of Winsor & Newton oil paint present in a paint box belonging to Hopper from the latter half of his artistic career. The analyses of the paint tube samples characterizing the pigments, additives, and binding media present utilizes X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and Raman.
Tatiana Shannon is a Third-Year Paintings Conservation major at the Winterthur/University of Delaware program in Art Conservation. Her first and second-year graduate summer internships were held at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center and Conservazione Beni Culturali respectively, and she is currently in the midst of her third-year graduate internship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to starting at Winterthur/University of Delaware, Tatiana held multiple training opportunities at a range of institutions including the National Park Service, Central Park Conservancy, Sculpture and Decorative Arts Conservation Services LLC., and Elizabeth Leto-Fulton Paintings Conservation.