Preventive Conservation Assessments Webinar Series

Wendy Claire Jessup is a conservator with a specialization in Preventive Conservation. She established Wendy Jessup and Associates, Inc. in 1987 after having worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Smithsonian Institution. Past projects have included the development of preventive conservation policies, collections management programs, environmental monitoring and improvement programs, collections relocations, collections storage improvements, and long-range conservation plans for a variety of museums, historical societies and other stewards of cultural property. Much of her work is with museums engaged in new construction or renovation projects. Many of her clients are housed in historic structures and have mixed collections, and require careful consideration of all aspects of the organization's operation in order to develop recommendations that are sensitive to the special requirements of both collection and historic structure.

Michael Henry is Principal Engineer/Architect and founding partner of Watson & Henry Associates where he has practiced for the past forty years, consulting to institutions, cultural heritage stewards and architects/engineers throughout the United States and in India, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil and Tunisia. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and guest lecturer in the WUDPAC program. Michael Henry's work includes: sustainable environmental management and monitoring for museum collections and archives; investigation, monitoring, analysis and assessment of historic buildings; preservation of significant historic structures, especially unconventional or technically challenging buildings; and engineered stabilization of large museum objects.

Héctor J. Berdecía-Hernández is a heritage conservator and currently serves as the founding Director-General of the Centro de Conservación y Restauración de Puerto Rico (CENCOR), where he is responsible for the institutional development of the Center, strategic planning, as well as the execution of special preservation and conservation projects, services, research, and initiatives. He also serves as an advisor to cultural institutions on technical matters related to the conservation of cultural heritage and is an Adjunct Professor in preservation technology and materials conservation at the Graduate Program in Architectural Conservation and Rehabilitation at the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.  

Before being appointed as the first Director-General of the CENCOR, Héctor worked on several heritage conservation and research projects in both the public and private sectors in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Puerto Rico. He is currently an active member of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC), where he serves as Program Chair of the Architecture Speciality Group (ASG) and is a member of the Code of Ethics Task Force. He is also a member of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC) and the Association for Preservation Technology International (APT). 

Héctor holds an M.S. in Historic Preservation with a concentration in Architectural Materials Conservation from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.EnvD. in Environmental Design-Architecture with a double major in History of the Americas from the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. He also studied Conservation Science courses within Georgetown University and the Universitá degli Studi de Firenze. 

Justine is the Program Manager for Preservation of Indigenous Collections at UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage. Justine has worked in museums and cultural heritage for more than a decade, specializing in collections care and green museum practices. She holds a BA in Art History from San Francisco State University and earned a dual Master's degree in Museum Studies and Business Administration from John F. Kennedy University. Justine is a contract Researcher at the Getty Conservation Institute and is the current Co-chair of the American Institute for Conservation Sustainability Committee.