Protecting Vulnerable Cultural Collections

With funding from that National Endowment for the Humanities, CCAHA offers emergency planning and conservation services to cultural institutions from across the country. Image courtesy of CCAHA.

The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) has provided preservation assistance to cultural institutions across the country since 1977 and was established with the primary goal of serving institutions with limited means. Over the past four decades, National Endowment for the Humanities funding has helped the organization survey and provide preservation consultations to archives, historical societies, libraries, and museums. In 2002, a challenge grant that raised more than $300,000 in non-federal funds helped CCAHA establish an endowment for preservation services. Most significantly, the NEH has supported CCAHA’s regional field services program for the Mid-Atlantic States since 1998. Through the program, CCAHA has offered education and training for thousands of individuals representing hundreds of institutions in the United States, ensuring that our cultural and intellectual heritage is preserved for centuries to come. In 2017, CCAHA expanded its NEH-funded work to create the Regional Heritage Stewardship Program, a concerted effort to reach chronically-underserved areas of the United States.

“[CCAHA’s] choice to focus on underserved areas in this region has been incredibly helpful. This region is culturally rich but not so much monetarily. The institutions are often overlooked by national organizations because they don’t always have paid or full-time staff and are located in less densely populated areas.”

–Mandy Higgins, Kentucky Historical Society

CCAHA offers workshops on the preservation of objects, paper, paintings, and audiovisual materials; digitization; disaster planning, response, and recovery; and fundraising and grant proposal writing. Image courtesy of CCAHA,

Through CCAHA's workshops, staff from cultural institutions learn to care for items in their collections, including historical images. Image courtesy of CCAHA. — Through CCAHA’s workshops, staff from cultural institutions learn to care for items in their collections, including historical images. Image courtesy of CCAHA.

With NEH funding, CCAHA offers workshops on the preservation of objects, paper, paintings, and audiovisual materials; digitization; disaster planning, response, and recovery; and fundraising and grant proposal writing. These low-cost programs are especially important for small and mid-sized organizations that operate with small staffs and tight budgets. And by expanding the field services program to the Gulf South, Appalachian states, and Intermountain West, CCAHA is ensuring that these regions, which lay claim to many small and volunteer-run organizations, have access to critical preservation education. Since 2017, the program has reached more than 200 organizations, most of which were located in Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia.

Beyond the field services and regional heritage stewardship, CCAHA regularly works with NEH grantees from small and mid-sized institutions to develop grant proposals and preserve their collections. These include the Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey, Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and the Moravian Archives.