Kleinman Forum, 220 S. 34th Street, Fisher Fine Arts Library
Join Jonathan S. Bell, senior vice president for global preservation strategy and founding director of the Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation at World Monuments Fund (WMF), and Randall Mason, professor and chair of the Department of Historic Preservation, for a lively discussion on the future of preservation.
As the preservation field responds to changing social, environmental, and technological realities, assessing its methods and priorities is essential to advancing its impact and relevance. In this conversation, Bell and Mason will share their perspectives on where the field stands today and how their institutions are responding to and helping shape its future.
They will discuss the newly launched Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation and its role in connecting experts, students, and practitioners through expanded training programs, international field schools, and research partnerships. The conversation will explore synergies between Penn’s Department of Historic Preservation and WMF, highlighting initiatives that link ideas with real-world practice and emphasize the role emerging professionals play in shaping an innovative and resilient preservation field.
Jonathan S. Bell is senior vice president for Global Preservation Strategy and founding director of the Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation at World Monuments Fund, where he oversees the organization’s project portfolio and guides professional engagement through training and thought leadership. Over the course of his career, Bell has worked with the Getty Conservation Institute on World Heritage Sites in China and Egypt, evaluated cultural site management from Kazakhstan to Colombia, and overseen strategic planning for largescale flood infrastructure with the County of Los Angeles. He serves on multiple international professional scientific committees and sits on editorial boards for two academic journals and teaches at Columbia University. He holds a B.A. from Harvard University, a D.E.A from the Sorbonne in France, an M.Sc. in Historic Preservation from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from UCLA.
Randy Mason is a professor and chair of historic preservation at Weitzman, where he also holds appointments in the Department of City & Regional Planning and the Department of Landscape Architecture. His teaching and research focus on preservation history and theory, historic preservation planning, urban conservation, social justice, and cultural landscape studies. He has been at Penn since 2004, serving as preservation chair from 2009-2017 and executive director of PennPraxis from 2014-2017. His publications include: The Once and Future New York: Historic Preservation and the Modern City (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) and Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (Routledge, 2019); Values in Heritage Management (Getty Publications, 2019).
If you require any accessibility accommodatio
Expand Image
