Spring 2024 Colleagues Retreat - Expanding the Narrative

June 16-17 in Rhinebeck - Join fellow NY preservationists for the first in-person gathering of our revamped Preservation Colleagues program!

Retreat Materials
Thank you to everyone who attended the 2024 Spring Preservation Colleagues Retreat in Rhinebeck! As you continue your work to expand the narrative in preservation, we hope you will return to the readings, podcasts, and slides below to help inspire and inform your work.

Take the survey!

Click here for retreat speaker slides.

Click here for our pre-retreat recommended reading list.

Location
The retreat will take place at the historic Beekman Arms & Delamater Inn in Rhinebeck, a charming village in the Hudson Valley with plenty of galleries, museums, and historic architectural eye candy!

Agenda
SUNDAY 6/16 - Optional

VILLAGE WALKING TOUR (4:00-5:30/6:00 PM) - Local experts will lead us on a walking tour of downtown Rhinebeck, giving us an overview of the village’s development history, key preservation projects, present-day planning efforts, the local business scene, and more!

Led by:

  • Michael Ghee, retired art teacher, 41 year resident of Rhinebeck, Member of Village Planning Board

  • Bill Jeffway, Executive Director, Dutchess County Historical Society

  • Lydia Slaby, Village of Rhinebeck Board Member and Planning Board liaison

DINNER & COCKTAIL HOUR (6:00 PM) - Meet back up Beekman Arms for an informal cocktail hour and self-pay dinner.

MONDAY 6/17 - EXPANDING THE NARRATIVE

GATHERING (9:00-9:15) - Coffee/tea available
WELCOME (9:15-10:15)

  • Centering Exercise "Arriving Here"

  • Context and Expectations 

  • Introductions 

LOOKING INWARD (10:15-11:00)

  • What does "expanding the narrative" mean to you?

  • Applying it to historic preservation

  • What is required

BREAK 11:00-11:15
BEGINNING TO LOOK OUTWARD #1 (11:15-12:45)

  • Review and reset 

  • Panel 1 - Alternative Frameworks - What frameworks and methods do professionals in allied fields (public historians, oral historians, curators) use to help them tell a fuller, more inclusive story?

  • Questions, Answers, Discussion

LUNCH & NETWORKING (12:45-1:45)

BEGINNING TO LOOK OUTWARD #2 (1:45-3:00)

TAKING IT HOME (3:00-4:00)

END at 4:00 p.m.

Speakers

Susan West Montgomery is a passionate advocate for natural and historic places who is committed to leveraging these places to connect citizens, promote social justice, and foster health and well-being. She has three decades of experience helping communities, organizations and agencies raise the profile of historic preservation in their communities, increase their impact, develop and advocate for innovative preservation tools and practices, and forge partnerships to save and steward historic places. She is particularly skilled at pressing organizations to think beyond their traditional allies to build broader coalitions to support their objectives. She has pioneered an equity audit methodology that offers a conscientious assessment of current practices and policies with an eye toward uncovering their inequitable and exclusionary applications. Once identified, such practices can be revised and updated to meet current standards and values.

Susan is former Vice President for Preservation Resources at the National Trust. She was hired to build the national preservation movement by supporting statewide and local partners and had primary responsibility for developing, promoting, and implementing the National Trust’s varied trainings and publications to serve emerging and established preservation leaders. She also oversaw the Trust’s extensive national grant making including the Fund for Sacred Places and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Before joining the National Trust, she served as President of Preservation Action and led the national grassroots lobbying network. As a registered Congressional lobbyist, she represented historic preservation interests on Capitol Hill. She also served for a time as Circuit Rider for the Maryland Association of Historic District Commissions where she provided technical assistance to over 40 local preservation programs throughout the state.

Select current and recent clients include the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation Foundation, National Preservation Institute, Preservation Connecticut, Providence Preservation Society, Preservation Buffalo Niagara, Rhode Island Historical Preservation & Heritage Commission, Student Conservation Association, Rhode Island Land Trust Council, and the City of Des Moines, IA.

Alternative Frameworks Panel

Jennifer Lemak is the chief curator of history at the New York State Museum. Prior to this appointment, she served there as senior historian/curator of social history. Major exhibition and publication projects include Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial (2017) and An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War (2012). Lemak is the author of Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany’s Rapp Road (SUNY Press, 2008), and several articles on the Great Migration to Upstate New York.     

Lemak serves the history field as a member of the New York State Preservation Board and as co-editor of the New York History journal.  She earned her MA in Public History and PhD in American History, both from the University at Albany. She is also a fellow of the New York Academy of Historians.

Lacey Wilson is the Project Manager of the Teen Museum Studies program of the Underground Railroad Education Center,  Previously, Lacey served as the Public Historian of the Albany African American History Project at the Albany Institute of History and Art. In this role, she curated Stories on an Education Advocate, an exhibition on Nell Stokes, and spearheaded Gordon Parks: My Camera is a Weapon, a project that invited middle-school and high-school photography students from Youth FX to create an exhibition to Gordon Parks: I, too am America with the exhibit  In 2023, she received a Black History Service award from the Albany Common Council  In 2019, she was featured in the New York Times article “Enslaved People Lived Here:These Museums Want You to Know.“and ReFraming History’s first podcast episode. ] for her work as a historic interpreter at the Owen-Thomas House and Slave Quarters. She received her BA in history from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and her MA in history with a concentration in Museum Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

YehehnakwáhsthaɁ Kim Hill is an enrolled member of the Tuscarora Nation and the first Interpreter of Native American History at the NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. She helps to develop and incorporate Indigenous stories and history into the interpretation of its historic sites and state parks. Her passion for interpretation, parks, and increasing the visibility of Native American communities and cultures through representation and education will support OPRHP efforts to share a more complete and inclusive history with the public through the agency’s Our Whole History initiative.

Emerging Preservation Practices

Cara Bertron works to shape more equitable cities through community and cultural preservation. She is currently managing Austin’s new Equity-Based Preservation Plan. Previous work includes the development of the Displacement Prevention Navigator pilot program in Austin, facilitation of the Action Agenda for Historic Preservation in Legacy Cities with the Preservation Rightsizing Network, and community-focused planning in Seattle’s Chinatown International District. Cara serves as a National Trust Adviser and is a member of the Next City Vanguard. Her favorite public places are Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, Oslo’s central library, and Barton Springs at night.

Marissa Marvelli is an independent historic preservation professional based in Kingston, New York. Her 2021-2022 cultural resource survey of East Harlem South/El Barrio, completed in collaboration with the non-profit Ascendant Neighborhood Development, has been recognized with awards from the Preservation League of New York and the state government for its comprehensive approach to heritage documentation. Her other accomplishments include the successful nominations of the Dorrance Brooks Square Historic District in Central Harlem and the expansive Lansingburgh Historic District in Troy, NY, to the National Register of Historic Places. Her current projects include a cultural resource survey in Newburgh that seeks to broaden the 1985 significance narrative for the East End Historic District. She is also leading a consultant team in preparing a National Register nomination for Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. The effort will draw from oral histories that the team is collecting as part of the park’s documentation. Her inquiry-driven project approach is greatly influenced by her decade-long experience with the Manhattan-based architecture firm BKSK. Born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Marissa came to New York in 2005 to pursue a master’s degree in historic preservation from Columbia University after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has been active in Kingston’s community affairs since moving there in 2014, serving on the local landmarks commission, volunteering with the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History, and regularly hosting public presentations about historic preservation.

Constance Denise Strother’s passion for our built environment began in 2015 with the completion of her thesis at Villa Maria College’s Interior Design program. She was hooked and wanted to learn so much more that she completed a master’s degree in urban planning, specializing in Urban Design and Physical Planning, which she received from the University at Buffalo in 2019.

Constance enjoys interior design and building unique wood furniture pieces. When she has free time she loves to attend live music concerts and theatre plays, watch crime shows, and HGTV while hanging out with her son, along with her yorkie Nacho!

k. kennedy Whiters, AIA, LEED GA, CPI is an architect, a published writer, a social scientist, a guest speaker, and an entrepreneur who is a national leader in the power of healing through storytelling about historical trauma. She is the founder of wrkSHäp | kiloWatt, home to three initiatives she founded to support racial equity in historic preservation, architecture, and history communications: Black in Historic Preservation (BiHP), (un)Redact the Facts, and Beyond Integrity in (X). The latter was a national historic preservation conference that focused on the topic of architectural integrity of historic landmarks. She was a 2008 recipient of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Mildred Colodny Fellowship. kennedy, a national leader in historic preservation, has reviewed national publications on the practice of preservation, been featured by the Advisory Council of Historic Preservation (ACHP), and on the UK/Canada-based podcast "The Allusionist.

kennedy earned professional licenses to practice architecture in Washington State and New York State. She is also the owner and principal of studio kW Architecture, PLLC, an architecture firm licensed to practice architecture in New York that specializes in historic preservation. She’s been known to hug a tree and a building or two.

 

QUESTIONS? Contact Caitlin Meives.