The Class of 2009 gave their final talks on September 4, 2009 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Tower Auditorium. The class is shown above, celebrating at the reception following the talks. The graduates are now off to their new positions across the country. Ana Alba is a contract conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. while Cynthia Albertson will remain at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as the Samuel H. Kress Research Fellow in Paintings Conservation. Katrina Bartlett will be beginning a position at The Menil Collection in Houston, TX as the Mellon Fellow in Paintings Conservation. Angela Campbell and Beth Nunan will both be in New York City. Angela at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Mellon Fellow in Paper Conservation and Beth at the American Museum of Natural History as a contract conservator. Robert Krueger is starting his own private practice, Cascadia Art Conservation Center, LLC, in Portland, OR while Stephanie Porto is setting up her practice in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Ariel O'Connor is the Mellon Conservation Fellow in Objects Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Josiah Wagener just started a position at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, VA as a conservation fellow, and Dawn Walus is Harvard University Libraries' new Book Conservator.

We are pleased to announce that James Reid-Cunningham has accepted the position of Visiting Instructor of Book Conservation. Beginning this spring, James will teach the history, technology, care and treatment of bindings for students who may one day have books in their care, or who wish to pursue book conservation as a specialty in the paper conservation curriculum. James studied history and art history at Johns Hopkins University and Tufts University before beginning his career in book conservation at Harvard University. He studied bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School in Boston, and is the President of the Guild of Book Workers.

He is currently the Chief Conservator of the Boston Athenaeum, a private membership library founded in 1807. He is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. James is also an advisor to the bookbinding program at the North Bennet Street School, and in 2006, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from NBSS.

He has taught bookbinding and conservation workshops for the Paper and Book Intensive, the Garage Annex School for Book Arts in Easthampton, MA., the North Bennet Street School, the Weissman Preservation Center at Harvard, the Guild of Book Workers, the New England Museum Assoc., the Kilgarlin Center for the Preservation of the Cultural Record at the University of Texas at Austin, and the San Francisco Center for the Book.