Expanding preservation services & access nationwide

VISION & LEADERSHIP

APF believes that cultural heritage is not a luxury. It is public infrastructure, evidence of our past, and witness to our present. Our vision is a country in which tangible art and heritage objects, across geography, community, scale, and type, are actively preserved, accessed, and understood.

The infrastructure for collections conservation in the United States has historically served the largest and most well-resourced institutions, with outsized concentration on the coasts. Existing funding sources are increasingly constrained and fragmented.

While the philanthropic pool has stagnated, the need for conservation and preservation services continues to grow, particularly among small and mid-sized institutions, community-based collections, under-resourced archives and libraries, and collections outside major metropolitan centers. While many of these collections are not large or visible enough to attract major institutional funding, they hold profound cultural, historical, and community value.

Without intervention, significant portions of our nation’s cultural record are at risk of irreversible loss. Art Preservation Fund was founded to change that.

Resources are concentrated. Collections are not.

THE PROBLEM WE ARE SOLVING

WHAT WE ARE BUILDING

In the near term, APF intends to direct financial resources and conservation expertise to collections and communities that would otherwise go without support — stabilizing at-risk materials, building institutional capacity, and raising public awareness of what preservation makes possible.

Looking further ahead, success looks like a materially stronger national preservation ecosystem: a more robust network of regional conservation service providers; a new generation of donors and advocates who understand preservation as essential; and a demonstrably more equitable distribution of conservation resources across geography, institution type, and community.

Equally important, we aim to shift preservation from a local concern to a broadly understood civic value, making the work of conservators visible, compelling, and relevant to people who have never thought about it before.

A stronger, bolder preservation ecosystem

Founding Board

Art Preservation Fund was founded by professionals whose careers sit at the intersection of conservation practice, philanthropic grantmaking, and institutional leadership. Together they bring the technical knowledge, strategic experience, professional networks, and passion to make this fund credible, effective, and durable from day one.

  • Annabelle (“Bellie”) is a recent graduate of the MBA program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she focused on building financially sustainable models for the arts and creative sectors. Prior to her MBA, she led marketing and development at the Balboa Art Conservation Center, where she managed the organization’s fundraising and external communications.

    At Wharton, Bellie consulted on strategy and development for the University of Delaware Department of Art Conservation, The National Gallery of Art, Barnes Foundation, and ArtsFund.

    Bellie is a textile conservator with an MS in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She holds BAs in Art Conservation and Anthropology from the University of Delaware. She trained in some of the world’s leading textile conservation labs, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Abegg Stiftung, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

    Bellie is a professional member of the American Institute for Conservation, and her active service on the organization’s Textile Specialty Group, Sustainability Committee, and Emerging Conservation Professionals Network reflects a deep commitment to strengthening the field from within. Bellie also serves on the Junior Board of World Monuments Fund and the Boards of Textile Society of America and the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts.

President, Co-Founder

  • Alison is the Director of The Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH) at Yale University and a strategy leader in systems for capacity and investment in ethical stewardship of global cultural heritage. Her focus at Yale is to advance best practices in collaboration for conservation, heritage science, technical imaging, cultural heritage AI, and international exchange.

    Prior to Yale she led the largest US-based grant program focused on sustaining the fields of art history, curatorship, art conservation, and heritage science as a program officer at the Mellon Foundation.

    Over her career, Alison has led domestic and international programs to resource new subfields of expertise, rapidly diversify pathways into museum and heritage careers, and redress the state of provenance, display, and preservation of Native American, Indigenous, and African cultural heritage in the US.

    Alison holds a BA in the History of Art from Bryn Mawr College and an MSIS in Museum Information Systems from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science. She received the 2022 Forbes Medal from the American Institute for Conservation for distinguished contributions to the field, and is an elected fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC). She is vice-chair of the board of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia and treasurer of the board for Voices in Contemporary Art. She is also a member of the Education Committee of the Guggenheim Museum in NY.

Treasurer, Co-Founder

Advisory Board

The Advisory Board consists of dedicated arts administrators and practicing conservators from across the country. In addition to serving as primary grant reviewers, the Advisory Board provides subject matter expertise to ensure Art Preservation Fund continues to support the needs of the field and the institutions we were founded to serve.

  • Andrea Knowlton is the Associate Director for Preservation and Conservation at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to this appointment,  she served as Senior Book Conservator and Head of Book and Paper Conservation for the Ransom Center from 2019-2026. Andrea has worked in conservation in a variety of settings, including the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Library of Congress. She holds an MS in Information Studies with Certificate of Advanced Study in Library and Archives Conservation from the Kilgarlin Center for the Preservation of the Cultural Record at the University of Texas at Austin. 

  • Julianna Ly is the associate conservator of paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Since joining the CMA in 2021, Julianna has worked on several complex projects including Pintoricchio’s Virgin and Child, which she curated as the first digital immersive conservation exhibition; Pier Francesco Foschi's Portrait of a Woman as Saint Catherine, and more recently, Berthe Morisot’s Reading. Julianna frequently collaborates with her curatorial and conservation colleagues on technical studies aiming to uncover artists’ materials and techniques. Notable recent technical studies have included Sandro Botticelli’s Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, and Filippino Lippi’s The Holy Family with Saint John the Baptist and Saint Margaret. Julianna received her MS from the Winterthur / University of Delaware Graduate Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC). She has held positions at institutions and private practices, including the Yale University Art Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and completed her third and final year of graduate study as the Fulbright / American Friends of the Mauritshuis intern at the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in the Hague, Netherlands. Julianna is a past assistant program chair (2023) and program chair (2024) of the Paintings Specialty Group of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC).  

  • Courtney VonStein Murray is a Senior Objects Conservator at the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in the conservation of diverse materials and collections. With an MS in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware and a BA in Chemistry from Emory University, she leads conservation projects, mentors emerging professionals, and contributes to publications and workshops. Courtney is active in professional service and holds multiple certifications in conservation and safety.

  • Leticia Gomez Franco (she/her/ella) is the Executive Director of the Balboa Art Conservation Center in San Diego, California. Her work is rooted in the intersection of culture, representation and social justice, all values that play a role in her position at BACC where she is collaboratively leading the 50 year old organization, through a transformative shift into a radically inclusive art conservation nonprofit. She previously served as Senior Arts and Culture Funding Manager for the City of San Diego where she led the City’s arts and culture funding program, oversaw the development and implementation of professional development, technical assistance and capacity building for arts organizations. Before that, she was co-founder and Director of Casa Familiar’s The Front Arte & Cultura, where she oversaw development and program management for multiple border art spaces as well as headed a rigorous and culturally conscious exhibition calendar with a commitment to local arts, representation, and community empowerment. Leticia is a first-generation college graduate born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from Tepatitlan Jalisco, Mexico and raised in Pico Union/South Central L.A. She holds a B.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in English and Chicana/o Studies and a M.A. in Curatorial Theory from San Diego State University’s Liberal Arts & Sciences Program. She is also a two-time fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture (NALAC). Leticia remains steadfast in her commitment to use her experience in arts administration and community activism to increase access to the arts for all.

  • Briann Greenfield, Ph.D. is Executive Director of the Williamstown + Atlanta Art Conservation Center and is based on Williamstown, Massachusetts. Previously, she was Director of the Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other roles include Executive Director of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Executive Director of the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. Motivated by the power of art and heritage to provide meaning, identity, and understanding across differences, she works to increase access to heritage resources and build strong cultural organizations that serve the public good. Greenfield received her bachelor’s degree from the University of New Hampshire and earned an MA in Museum Studies and a PhD in American Studies from Brown University. She has held fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and Winterthur Museum. In 2010, she received Central Connecticut State University’s prestigious Board of Trustees Research Award for her book Out of the Attic: Inventing Antiques in Twentieth-Century New England (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).

  • Laura Hortz Stanton joined the Penn Museum in Philadelphia in 2022 as the Director of Collections. In this role, she oversees collections management, acquisitions, repatriation, preservation, and conservation activities for the museum’s collection of over one million objects from around the world. She leads a diverse team of Keepers, Collections Managers, Registrars, and Conservators, collaborating to develop and apply innovative approaches to collections stewardship. Prior to joining the museum, Laura served as the Executive Director of the Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA), one of the leading conservation organizations in the United States, which serves museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions. She has delivered lectures and taught workshops on collections management, emergency preparedness, and preventive conservation, and has served on national committees and task forces focused on cultural heritage preservation. Laura holds an M.A. in History and Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY Oneonta and a B.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology from Temple University.

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