Global Heritage at Risk
University of Michigan Museum Studies Program
Fall 2015 Lecture Series

Speaker: Katherine Malone-France, Vice President for Historic Sites, National Trust for Historic Preservation

Terrorism. Looting. Financial crisis. Political factionalism. Unregulated development. Neglect.

The news is full of ongoing threats to heritage sites and museums around the globe. In this series, speakers representing diverse countries examine contemporary threats to museums, collections, and historic sites in the Middle East, Greece, India, and the United States. Series speakers will document the many factors fueling the ongoing loss of objects, monuments, and historical places and will explore why heritage destruction in distant regions should matter to those of us thousands of miles removed from the most horrific ongoing threats. We also focus closer to home to consider the challenges to heritage preservation in our own backyard.

But this is not solely an exercise in despair, as speakers also examine the ways that international organizations, national and local governments, NGOs, communities, and individuals are responding to the challenges facing countless museums and heritage sites. The results are new ways of defining the meaning and significance of heritage for local communities, new strategies for heritage documentation and care, and new opportunities for us all to become engaged in caring for our own and our world’s irreplaceable cultural heritage.

This event will be held in the U-M Museum of Art, Helmut Stern Auditorium at 6:30 pm.

Katherine Malone-France is the Vice President for Historic Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, leading its portfolio of 27 historic sites around the country to provide expansive and sustainable public benefit as they model exemplary preservation, collections management, and interpretation.  Prior to her appointment, she served as the Senior Director of Outreach, Education and Support at the National Trust.  Her leadership has also included a diverse range of collaborations with contemporary artists creating new works at National Trust Historic Sites and a revision of the National Trust’s collections management policy that has been hailed as a national model for its inclusion of historic structures by the American Alliance of Museums and the American Association for State and Local History.   Katherine also served as the Executive Director of the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and the Assistant Director at the Decatur House, a National Trust Historic Site and National Historic Landmark in Washington, DC.