Welcome everybody. My name is Joelle Wickins. I'm the Interim Director of the Winteri University of Delaware Program and Art Conservation. It's an absolute pleasure to welcome those on the zoom screen and those here in Copeland for this day of celebration of the Wood Peck class of 2023. For the last three years, we have all had the honor of being part of their journey in a variety of different ways. Today, we're thrilled to gather to look back at their accomplishments and adventures, and wish them well as they take their next steps. As we begin, I ask you to look at the words on the screen behind me. They were written by the members of the class. We are here to celebrate. I asked them to think about the places they had been living this year. To think about the people who have do and will inhabit that place. The people who have do and will build and take care of the area. Then I asked them to write a phrase or sentence that shares how the area nourished, inspired, and otherwise impacted them over the last year. And to make sure it would fit on the screen, I asked them to do it in ten words or less. I ask you now to choose one, read it, and let it connect you to thoughts about how the area you have been in in the last few days has been nourishing and inspiring you. And I'll be quiet for just a minute while you do that for 10,000 years or more, prior to the moments we have just remembered, this land was the traditional homeland of the Lenape. People sometimes translated original people. The Lenape were known as mediators and called the grandfathers by the entire Algonquin family tree encompassing the Delaware River Basin. This homeland includes present day New Jersey, most of Delaware, and the eastern parts of New York and Pennsylvania. And was home to 20,000 Lenape and three clans, the Wolf clan, the Turtle clan, and the Turkey clan. Within the first 100 years of contact with European invaders, 80% of the Lenape had already died from violent conflict and disease. In spite of the famous peace treaty between William Penn and Lenape chief, Tainan, Europeans under the name of a British general, Thomas West Lord Delaware now pronounced Delaware, forced the Lenape westward and northward to Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario where many Lenape descendants live today. But some Lenape never left hiding in plain sight. As keepers of the land to this day are the Lenape Indian tribe of Delaware, based in chewed Delaware, The Nanticoke, Lenny Lenape tribal nation in Bridgeton, New Jersey, and the Ramapo Lenape nation in Mahwah, New Jersey, and other thriving Lenape communities. With this moment and these words, my intent is to honor the historical and ongoing presence of the Lenape and the Nanticoke on this land where we now live, work, and celebrate. May our time together today bring honor to this land and its past, present, and future caretakers. These words are an adoption of a land acknowledgment written by Chief Dennis Coker. I am thankful to have the opportunity to share them with you and hope this moment of thought encourages you to connect to and learn from those who are indigenous to the land on which you live. For those of us who join you year after year, you will recognize that me kicking us off and introducing myself as the interim director of Wood Peck is a big change. I'll be in this position for the next year and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to serve U D. Woodpeckwinterter and the conservation community in this way. I have this opportunity because Debbie Hes, Norris Wood, Peck's director for many, many years, was asked to be the interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UD. Like me, she officially started her position on August 1, and we'll step back into the role of Wood Peck Director on September 1, 2024. But do not fear she is here with us today and will bring her joy, passion and love of both conservation and the Beatles to the podium later this afternoon. Our role changes are not the only ones that are impacting Woodpec. Right now we are celebrating many beginnings. Two of them come with a tinge of sadness as they require colleagues to depart for other adventures. The others are just full of joy as people join and enrich our team. I'm going to call them all out right now. And once I'm done, it would be wonderful if you would celebrate them with a round of applause. But I'm going to ask you to hold that until I've gotten through the list because it's rather lengthy. And if you are here in the audience, if you wouldn't mind joining when I call out your name. So the first who is departing is Joan Irving, affiliated faculty member and senior paper conservator at Winter, who has just retired and is off to all kinds of new adventures. Matt Cushman, affiliated faculty member, and Winter paintings Conservator is moving on to be director of conservation and head of the paintings lab at the Worcester Art Museum. Dr. Melissa to done joins us as assistant professor and Woodpeck Associate Director, Dr. Roxanne Rad Poor also joins us as an assistant professor. Dr. Leora Mao is here as a postdoc for the next two years. And then Holly Fasciano and Danielle Kelly have joined us as administrators in the U D Art Conservation Depart office. And then finally, the change that we have always at this time of year. The Woodpeck class of 2026 joined us yesterday and started their journey. So if we could all celebrate them, that would be great. Thank you. Okay. So in 1974, Winter and the University of Delaware established the Winter University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. Since that moment, both institutions have been led by many who have continued the commitment originally made to educate leaders who will help care for the world's cultural heritage. We have two of those leaders with us today who will now share a few words. First, Chris Stand, the Charles F Montgomery Director and CEO of Winter. And then Dr. Wendy Bell, Associate Dean for the Humanities at the University of Delaware. Good morning. Thank you, Joel. What a great turnout today. It feels so good to have so many people in the auditorium here to see the presentations today. I'm going to keep my comments brief. As Joel mentioned, I'm Chris Strand, the Director and CEO here at Win. It's my pleasure to welcome the students and all of their supporters here. Today, I have two things that I wanted to convey today. One is a congratulations, and the other, hope the congratulations I know might sound a little premature because you still have a little bit ahead of you. But I would love for you to reflect for a moment on what a remarkable accomplishment it is to get to here right now and think of all the things that you have done to get yourself here. And that is, I think all of us in the winter community would say, a remarkable accomplishment already. So while you have presentations to do and orals, that's fine. U, don't focus too much on it. This is also where I am in the batting order. So I did want to be able to say congratulations to all of you. The second thing is the hope. And over the years I've spoken to many graduates from our programs. And one of the things that I love is how many of them talk about wintour, being a little bit of a home away from home for them, even as they've graduated and even many years from their experience here. And while we have a small role to play in your efforts as students, I hope that you will always think of winter as your home, away from home. We watch from a distance as you have all of these great accomplishments. We learn about the very esoteric topics that you pursue as staff here at water. We're very proud of what you've managed to accomplish. So we hope you'll return often, and we hope this feels like you're home, away from home. So with that, I'm going to yield the podium to someone more eloquent than myself. Wendy, please join us up here at the microphone. Yeah, thanks Chris. I'll do my best to live up to the promise of eloquence. I'm Wendy Bell, and I'm the Associate Dean for the Humanities and a Professor of Art History at the University of Delaware in the College of Arts and Sciences. And I'm so honored to be here with all of you this morning and to have the chance to share in this important event together with our interim Dean of Arts and Sciences and all around Wonder Woman, Debbie Hes, Norris. Now in just a few minutes, we will be celebrating the achievements of the Wood pack class of 2023. But before we do that, I would like to take a minute to recognize the many other people who are here today. And whose efforts played a large role in making these achievements possible. In particular, I would like to start with the family and friends of today's students. So would anyone who is here in that capacity, please raise your hands up in the air so we can see them. Alright, Parents, guardians, siblings, partners, and friends. Thank you for all of the support that you've provided this amazing group of students over the past few years. Thank you for giving their education such a high priority in your lives. And please join me in thanking and congratulating all the family and friends who are here today. Now, as many of you already know, Wood Pac supports a culture of disciplinary rigor, breadth of intellectual perspective, the cultivation of technical skills, as well as deliberation and ethical reflection, the application of research in service of the profession, but also in service of public life. The Pac staff and faculty, all of whom hold affiliated faculty appointments with the University of Delaware, work every single day to create this culture. And each and every one of them embody these principles. So I'd like to say a personal thank you to the faculty and staff for all of their efforts on behalf of our students. And if you are faculty and staff, could you please raise your hands way up in the air so we can recognize you? And please join me in thanking them. And now to the real stars of the day, Sarah, Veronica, Kylee, and Win, Margaret Meghan and L. Olave, Alyssa and Catherine. We could not be prouder of all that you have learned and accomplished individually. You have spent the past summer, past year at world class institutions across the United States and abroad. Collectively, your achievements go even farther and deeper. For as a class, you have worked tirelessly to advance the tradition, not accidental, academic. What a love for me to make the tradition of academic excellence and innovation that distinguishes what pack, both nationally and internationally. We have no less than 62 graduate degrees in the College of Arts and Sciences. It is no exaggeration to say that wood pack sparkles and shines as the brightest jewel among them. I know that I speak for all of my colleagues at the university in expressing our profound gratitude to winter, for the long collaboration that has made this program so exceptional, together with the Winter program in American material culture. And we'll continue to assure the success of both of these programs for many years to come. And with that, we get to hear what everyone has been up to for the past year. Ultimately, what we're celebrating here today is a group of students who took up the challenges of advanced training and leadership in their field. The students have accomplished this at the highest possible level, and soon after exams I gathered, they will join an elite group of conservators and alumni educated by one of the top programs in the world. So as we welcome the class of 2026, I wish you a class of 2023, every success in your future. And I cannot wait to see what you all do next. Congratulations, Thank you so much, Chris and Wendy. Now's the time to turn to that program that hopefully you all have, right. Which will take you through the day. As each student is ready to present, their major supervisor will introduce them to all of you. They will present their work and then there'll be a little bit of time for questions from the audience which each student will manage. I'm going to take my moment to talk to the ten of you before I put on my major supervisor hat. And move on to the next bit, to the ten of you in the front row. Three years ago, we started this adventure on a zoom screen. I did not meet you all as a group in person until the last day of preventive Nine months later, you learned microscopy with microscopes in your homes and instructors in their homes in Boston and Williamsburg. We arranged schedules to safely drop off supplies from one block and pick up supplies for the next for furniture block. I believe those supplies even included a chair for each of you to study and document. And now we gather with all of you having spread across the US and across the ocean for international adventures. You've learned so much in these years and you are going to tell us about some of that today with you. One of the things I think we have all proved is that life is going to present you with things you never expected. If you meet those things with creativity, determination, and a willingness to re, evaluate what you do and how you do it. You can end up on a journey that is not what you originally thought it would be, but is amazing and inspiring in so many unexpected ways. Thank you for being the class that said, okay, not what I was planning, but let's do this conservation grad school thing. From the comfort and safety, but also the isolation of my own home. As you sit here thinking back on that, I hope you are feeling like you made the right choice. I know I will always be thankful you made that choice. I am better today because of the experiences that choice, your choice brought to my life.
Opening Remarks & Welcome
From Robert Diiorio August 22, 2023
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