GREENVILLE, Pa.-- The National Endowment for the Humanities recently named Thiel College as one of 65 recipients of a Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions, which will fund a preservation and conservation project for the Thiel Archives and Art Collection at the College.
The project will begin with an assessment of the College’s current methods of storing and preserving its artworks and archives. The assessment will be performed by a professional conservator from the Intermuseum Conservation Association who will serve as the project’s consultant. The grant will also provide online training in the areas of Digital Library Projects and Preservation to several College faculty and staff members who are involved in the project’s implementation, including the project’s director, Professor of History David Buck, Ph.D., Reference Librarian Michelene Orteza, and Circulation Librarian Debra Brown. Other members of the project committee who will assist in the institution of the project include Professor of Painting and Curator of Art Sean McConnor, Library Director Tressa Snyder, and Archivist John Hauser ’71 H’20. The current phase of this multi-step project is set to last until March 2023.
“This assessment will give us guidance for how to improve the conservation and preservation of what we already have in the Thiel Archives and Art Collection,” said Buck, who has taught a Historical Methods course at the College for the past several years focusing on archival research. His class has specifically concentrated on a project titled “Thiel Veterans,” which has involved using the Thiel Archives to conduct research about Thiel College alumni who have served in the military and then constructing a database of research findings. “If we can improve the storage and conservation of what we have, we can continue projects like that going forward,” Buck said.
Following the assessment, the consultant will make recommendations for improvement, and after reviewing those recommendations, the project’s committee will develop and implement a conservation plan with the ultimate goal of preserving the archives and collection so they can be more accessible to students, friends of the College, and members of the community.
“We’re very excited to have a professional conservator come in and evaluate our space to help us make decisions on how we can preserve our art collection and Thiel library archives,” said Snyder. “It’s quite prestigious to receive one of these grants, and now we’re on track to eventually continue the second step of our project, which will include making our physical archives more accessible to the larger community electronically in digital formats.”
The College’s library is set to undergo renovations in the next several years, so this preservation assessment will also inform future plans regarding the construction of a space for the Thiel Archives within the library.
The Thiel Archives and Art Collection are two central entities of culture, history, and creativity on campus that are regularly utilized by members of the community, and so the College considers it a priority to preserve them to ensure their future accessibility so that they may continue to serve as important symbols of tradition and heritage for future generations.
Thiel College has a permanent art collection of 584 pieces that is comprises prints, drawings, paintings, textiles, furniture, ceramics, and sculptures. Many pieces are currently held in storage, but Professor and Curator of Art Sean McConnor regularly displays portions of the collection in curated exhibits in the College’s Weyers-Sampson Gallery. The Thiel Archives, located in the Langenheim Memorial Library on campus, houses approximately 81,000 documents related to the history of Thiel College since 1866. These documents include, but are not limited to, college catalogs, administrative meeting minutes, newspapers, programs, yearbooks, and visual and audio materials that contain recordings of significant campus visits from individuals including Amelia Earhart H’32, Fred Rodgers H’69, and then-Vice President Richard M. Nixon H’59.
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency that supports education, research, preservation, and public programs related to the humanities in an effort to demonstrate its position that the study of the humanities is relevant and informs present-day life and culture. The Endowment’s definition of “humanities” is the study of history, language, linguistics, literature, philosophy, law, archeology, religion, ethics, and the arts. To achieve its mission of fostering wisdom and respect for these subjects, the Endowment often awards grants to cultural institutions such as libraries, archives, museums, universities, colleges, public television and radio stations, and individual scholars to support projects that are intended to strengthen teaching programs in learning institutions, facilitate research and original scholarship, and preserve and provide access to cultural and educational resources.
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