This past summer as a part of a summer internship going into her second year in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, Binh-An Nguyen spent 10 weeks at the Hopewell Museum in Hopewell, NJ, leading a large 18^th-20^th century textile and garment recovery project. This project is part of a venture being undertaken by the museum as a part of their Reimagination project. Binh-An was supervised by Wendy Jessup, a preventive conservator, who connected the museum with the WUDPAC program. During her time at the museum, Binh-An developed her skills as a preventive conservator while establishing freezing protocols for pest eradication, collaboratively establishing a project plan, and leading pre-program interns Anamaria Cuevas and Jack Kremer. By the end of the summer nearly 1,000 textile and garment items were examined; of those items over 550 were frozen, and over 400 were rehoused by the team in preparation for temporary off-site storage. As there are still many more textiles and garments to examine, freeze, and rehouse, Binh-An will continue to work with the museum in this semester to help train board members and volunteers to complete the project before the museum begins the renovation in Spring 2025. Read more about the Hopewell Museum’s plans for the future on their website.

Binh-An would like to thank the Hopewell Museum for this amazing opportunity, Wendy for her incredible mentorship, and Anamaria and Jack for their support in this project. She would also like to thank the Emily Shuetz Stryker Memorial Award for providing additional funding this summer.