Aligning Standards with Mission:
A New Framework for Sustainable Lending
April 7–8, 2026 • Heartland Whole Health Institute • Bentonville, AR
About
Welcome to this thought-provoking convening that will explore new approaches to expanding public access to works of art. Throughout their history, museums have prioritized the preservation of works in their collections, often at the expense of providing public access to them.
In recent years, museums have begun to take their commitment to their communities much more seriously; however, high standards for the loan of works have limited their sharing, resulting in tension between preservation and access. Although public access has always mattered, it has been outweighed by exacting HVAC standards and other facility concerns in deciding outgoing loan requests. These standards frequently cannot be met by the lender and further increase the carbon footprint and higher energy costs of the cultural sector.
The question is not whether standards matter—they do. This convening of museum directors, curators, registrars, and conservators will explore how evidence-based conservation standards and an enhanced public mission can be brought into more productive alignment.
Schedule Overview
DAY ONE
Tuesday, April 7
All day: Arrival and check-in
6:30 – 7:00 pm: Opening conversation with Glenn D. Lowry, Stephan Jost, and Neal Benezra
7:00 – 9:00 pm: Dinner
DAY TWO
Wednesday, April 8
6:30 – 8:30 am: Breakfast
8:15 – 8:45 am: Shuttle service to the convening site
9:00 – 9:10 am: Welcome and introductions with Anne Kraybill
9:10 – 10:15 am: "Myth, Risk, and Reality: Climate Control in the Era of Sustainability" with Caitlin Southwick
10:15 – 10:30 am: Break
10:30 – 11:45 am: "Shifting Standards: Case Studies from the Field" with Mike Brown, Amber Kerr, Adam Levine, Vanessa Applebaum, and Stephan Jost; Moderated by Anne Kraybill
11:45 am – 1:00 pm: Lunch in Ballroom B of the Heartland Whole Health Institute
1:00 – 2:00 pm: "Conservation Standards and Loan Realities: An Evidence-Based Approach" with Joel Taylor
2:05 – 3:15 pm: "Smart Sharing: Preventative Tools that Reduce Risk and Cost" with Adrienne Reid, Fiona Graham, Dave Masom, and Annika Erikson; Moderated by Caitlin Southwick
3:15 – 3:25 pm: Break
3:30 – 4:15 pm: Interactive roundtables
4:15 – 4:25 pm: Final words with Anne Kraybill
4:30 – 5:00 pm: Break and shuttle back to hotel
6:00 – 8:30 pm: Dinner
Featured Speakers
Caitlin Southwick
Founder of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation (SiC) and Managing Director of Ki Futures
Caitlin Southwick (PD, MSc) is the founder of Ki Culture and Sustainability in Conservation (SiC) and managing director of Ki Futures. She holds a professional doctorate in Conservation and Restoration from the University of Amsterdam. Before founding Ki Culture, she worked at institutions—including the Vatican Museums, the Getty Conservation Institute, The Uffizi Gallery, and Rapa Nui—for eight years. She served as the secretary of ICOM’s Working Group on Sustainability, and she is a member of AIC’s Sustainability Committee and a Climate Reality Leader. An international speaker and trainer, she created the Getting Climate Control Under Control and Accessible Loans programs, driving systemic change for museums.
Neal Benezra
Senior Advisor at Art Bridges Foundation and Former Helen and Charles Schwab Director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Neal Benezra served as the Helen and Charles Schwab director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) from 2002–2022. Benezra oversaw a major transformation of SFMOMA, resulting in the construction of a 235,000-square-foot expansion of the museum completed in 2016. He also oversaw an ambitious Campaign for Art that brought 3,000 outright and promised gifts from 225 collectors to the museum. Prior to SFMOMA, Benezra served in curatorial and administrative positions at the Des Moines Art Center, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis; and Stanford University.
Joel Taylor
Senior Researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU)
Joel Taylor is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) in Oslo. He works in the fields of preventive conservation and heritage studies. He has previously worked at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles, where he co-led the Managing Collection Environments initiative; University College London; University of Oslo; and English Heritage. His doctoral thesis was on preventive conservation, and he has published on museum loans, indoor climate, risk management, and sustainability in conservation, among other things.
Dave Masom
Chief Executive Officer of Conserv
Dave Masom is the CEO of Conserv, an environmental monitoring platform for cultural heritage designed to protect the world’s priceless art, historical documents, and artifacts. Masom has a multidisciplinary background spanning product development, behavioral psychology, and analytics. He started his career as a management consultant at Deloitte, where he was part of the founding team of the People Analytics practice. He has advised social enterprises and startups in the US and the UK, and he co-founded AppThink, a platform for startup accelerators.
Stephan Jost
Michael and Sonja Koerner Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)
Stephan Jost is an art museum director who is currently the Michael and Sonja Koerner director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. Previously, he served as the director of the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii; the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont; and the Mills College Art Museum in Oakland, California. He also held curatorial positions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Jost is a past president on the Board of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and is also on the Board of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation. He previously served as vice chair on the Board of Hampshire College, where he was a board member from 2018–2022, as well as 2008–2016. He holds a BA in art history from Hampshire College and an MA in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. He is originally from East Lansing, Michigan, and is a citizen of Canada, the USA, and Switzerland.
Fiona Graham
Owner of Graham Conservation
Fiona Graham is a professional conservator specializing in preventive conservation. Based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, she provides consulting services to museums nationally. Graham also teaches preventive conservation in university programs and delivers collection care training to small museums. Her background includes a Master of Art Conservation from Queen’s University and 36 years of work in museums, government departments and agencies, and an architectural firm. Graham is a preventive conservation coach for Ki Futures’ Getting Climate Control Under Control initiative.
Adrienne Reid
Senior Vice President at Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency, Inc.
Adrienne Reid is the senior vice president at Huntington T. Block Insurance Agency, Inc., specializing in fine art insurance for leading museums and significant private and corporate collections. With over 20 years of experience, she provides tailored brokerage and risk management solutions for museums, collectors, and art services companies. Reid holds an MBA from Tulane University, a BA in politics and art history from the University of Dallas, and a Certified Insurance Counselor designation. A seven-time Risk & Insurance Power Broker Award winner, she is a frequent museum conference presenter, and she authored the insurance chapter in Museum Registration Methods, 6th edition.
Jill Sterrett
Arts and Cultural Heritage Advisor
Jill Sterrett operates at the intersection of collections, conservation, and memory. She is currently realizing a new history center at the foot of the Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. She was the interim director and deputy director of the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago (2018–2021) and the director of collections and an art conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1990–2018). Her co-edited book, Art in Pursuit of Common Cause, was published in 2024.
Annika Erikson
Founder and CEO of Articheck
Annika Erikson studied paper conservation at UAL, Renaissance art history in Tuscany, and the classics in Greece before working in conservation at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Royal Horticultural Society, and Tate, where in 2010, she got the idea to develop a mobile digital tool to streamline and create an industry standard in condition reports. She became an entrepreneur and founded Articheck in 2013. She is a member of ICOM, ICON, and AIS (Art Identification Standard), as well as a fellow of the Linnaean Society. She has lectured at Sotheby’s Institute, NYU, UCL, Christie’s Education, Kingston University, UCLA, City and Guilds, and Korean Art Management.
Amber Kerr
Head Conservator and Senior Paintings Conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lunder Conservation Center
Amber Kerr is the head conservator and senior paintings conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lunder Conservation Center. The center is designed with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, so the public may observe the conservation staff caring for the collections when the museum is open. Kerr received her Master of Science from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She is a fellow with the International Institute of Conservation (IIC), where she has served as director of communications, vice president, co-chair for the IIC Dialogue Series, council member, and chair of the Student Posters Committee. Kerr is also a professional associate in the American Institute for Conservation and is a founding member and past officer for the AIC Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN). She is a professional member in the paintings group of the International Council of Museum Conservation Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC) and a member of the Washington Conservation Guild, where she served on the board of directors and as a past officer. Her recent work includes raising institutional awareness to climate action in cultural heritage by serving on the Smithsonian Sustainability Working Group and advocating for sustainable practices in museums by building on her past work as lead organizer for the international symposium, Stemming the Tide: Global Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change in Culture Heritage, which was hosted at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and coordinated with representatives from the Smithsonian National Collection Program, IIC, ICOMOS, and AIC.
Vanessa Applebaum
Director of Conservation at the Toledo Museum of Art
Vanessa Applebaum is the director of conservation at the Toledo Museum of Art, where she leads conservation strategy in support of collections access and long-term stewardship. An accredited objects conservator, she focuses her research on the impact of artistic intent on institutional preservation planning and risk-based approaches to conservation practice. She is an associate of the American Institute for Conservation and an elected fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. She has served in her current role since January 2024.
Glenn D. Lowry
Director Emeritus of The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA)
Glenn D. Lowry is the director emeritus of The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). During his tenure (1995–2025), he dramatically expanded the collection, oversaw the physical transformation of the museum’s campus through two building campaigns that more than doubled the size of MoMA’s galleries, quintupled its endowment, created an education and research center, and inspired a new model for the presentation of modern and contemporary art. Lowry has championed innovation, both onsite and online, to grow MoMA’s annual visitation to nearly 3 million in the galleries and over 35 million across all digital platforms. He expanded the museum’s curatorial departments, with the addition of media and performance, and supported MoMA’s intellectual growth by creating new research programs like Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (CMAP). In 2000, he led the merger of MoMA with the contemporary art center PS1, and in 2015, he worked with Thelma Golden to introduce a joint fellowship program with the Studio Museum in Harlem for rising professionals in the arts.
Mike Brown
Head of Campus Sustainability at the Portland Museum of Art
Born and raised in Maine, Michael Brown joined the cultural sector just over four years ago, following experiences in higher education and state and local government. Having seen firsthand how small changes can cascade across a shifting ecology, he is grateful to be part of the Portland Museum of Art as it stands on the precipice of expansion. He’s married and has two children. His youngest is graduating high school in June, and his oldest gets their undergraduate degree in May.
Adam Levine
Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey President, Director, and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA)
Adam Levine is the Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey president, director, and CEO of the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA). Previously, he was the CEO of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, and deputy director at TMA, where he oversaw marketing, communications, and education. He began his museum career in the Greek & Roman department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Levine co-founded and incubated the Center for Visual Expertise (COVE) within TMA. COVE, which applies art historical skills to workplace safety, is now a successful enterprise serving multiple Fortune 500 clients. Levine also co-founded Art Research Technologies, acquired by Podium Capital. He has consulted with clients, including auction houses, think tanks, and universities. He likewise publishes broadly on topics, ranging from museum management to Byzantine iconography. He serves on several boards, including the University of Toledo Board of Trustees. Levine earned bachelor’s degrees in anthropology, art history, and mathematics and social sciences from Dartmouth College, graduating summa cum laude. He completed his MSt and DPhil in the history of art from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he was recently named a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute.