Art Jameel’s biannual Collection Care Fellowship addresses the particular challenges and opportunities associated with managing, conserving and caring for institutional art collections situated in West Asia and associated climates and situations across South Asia, Africa and other relevant countries. 

The research fellowship seeks to explore various aspects of museum practices including conservation, archives and digitalisation, documentation, environmental concerns, shipping and storage, which to date have been dominated by narratives set by museums in Europe, the UK and North America. The fellowship’s objective is to critically review existing guidelines and suggest new approaches that are applicable to institutions based in the Gulf, the broader West Asia region and beyond. 

We are pleased to announce that Amanda Pagliarino (Head of Conservation, Registration and Imaging Services, QAGOMA) and Rachelle Tabet (Deputy Director of Collections, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar) have been selected for the first iteration of the programme.

Amanda Pagliarino will be focusing on the uneasy alignment between current international loan protocols that favour the temperate climate of Europe, United Kingdom and North America with the experience of collecting institutions situated in the Gulf, West Asia region and the Southern hemisphere, in conjunction with the cultural heritage sector’s common purpose for sustainable, environmentally responsible, energy efficient practices. She will be exploring how institutions located in dry, arid, humid, and tropical climates negotiate engagement with conventional international loan protocols and traditional environmental guidelines that better-suit temperate climates. 

Rachelle Tabet will be addressing the challenges associated with limited access to conservation-quality materials for arts professionals based in the SWANA region, attributed to socio-economic, political and climatic conditions. In response, her research aims to develop innovative and context-specific material testing methodologies for art collection housing materials used in the region. Building on her research as a Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2021-22), this initiative considers the scarcity of conservation-quality resources and emphasises the necessity of sourcing locally available alternatives.

Biographies:

Amanda Pagliarino leads the Conservation, Registration and Imaging departments at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia. Amanda is active in the field of sustainable collection management, is a member of the advisory board for the International Institute for Conservation’s Net Zero Pilot Project, and author of the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material’s innovative Environmental Guidelines 2018/2022. Amanda publishes on the topics of climate change and climate projections in Australian, energy efficient and sustainable collection management practices, and conservation of contemporary art. She is an advocate for climate-active change and encourages collaboration and cooperation as a way forward.

Rachelle Tabet is a Preventive Conservation Specialist from Beirut, Lebanon. Tabet joined the Arab Image Foundation in 2015 as Senior Archivist and completed her M.A. in Preventive Conservation at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, via distance learning. She graduated with distinction honours in 2019. In 2021, Rachelle was awarded the Andrew W. Mellon Conservation Fellowship in the Department of Photograph Conservation at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Her 12 months fellowship research focused on creating alternative housings for photographs using materials manufactured in Lebanon. Currently Rachelle is Deputy Director of Collections at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar.

For more information about the Art Jameel Collection please click here.