The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design welcomes public historian and preservationist Brian Whetstone to the faculty in the Department of Historic Preservation, and Randy Mason, an internationally-recognized scholar and practitioner of values-based heritage conservation who is a professor of historic preservation, city and regional planning and landscape architecture, as the Department’s next chair.
“The Department has been at the forefront of scholarship and fieldwork for over four decades, and Randy has played an integral role in that since he arrived,” said Fritz Steiner, dean and Paley Professor at Weitzman. “I am confident that Brian will contribute to all the work the Department does to strengthen communities through preservation.”
Whetstone, who joins Weitzman as an assistant professor of historic preservation beginning with the 2025-2026 Academic Year, explores the intersections between housing and labor equity at museums, historic sites, and preservation organizations in the United States. In a forthcoming book from the University of Massachusetts Press, Renting History: Housing, Labor, and America’s Heritage Infrastructure, he examines the role of renting and the provision of housing at historic sites, museums, and heritage organizations across the twentieth century. Drawing from the experiences of tenants, caretakers, and employees who live onsite at these institutions, Renting History situates tenants as key figures in the development of modern public history practice and the preservation and interpretation of historic sites. Whetstone is also working on a project exploring the role of historic preservation in the expansion and contestation of mass incarceration from the mid-twentieth century to the present. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he earned in PhD in history, as well as Princeton and the University of Connecticut Storrs, and in 2024, he was a research fellow at Weitzman’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites. Before joining Penn, he served as a historian with the National Park Service’s History, Architecture, Conservation, and Engineering Center (HACE), where he coordinated research and preservation documentation projects for national parks in the northeastern United States. At Penn, he will teach graduate courses on public history and American architectural history; his other teaching interests include oral history and urban history.
Mason has been instrumental in expanding the purview of historic preservation at urban and landscape scales and exploring how preservation works as an archive of, and agent for, change in contemporary society. He previously served as chair of the Department of Historic Preservation from 2009–2017; his new term, for two years, begins July 1. He directs Weitzman’s Urban Heritage Project (UHP), which undertakes planning, preservation and cultural landscape projects in the US and abroad for partners including the US National Park Service and Rwanda’s national government. Mason is also the founding faculty director of Weitzman’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (CPCRS), which conducts research, teaching and fieldwork related to Black heritage places marking civil rights histories. Mason’s research and teaching interests include history and theory of preservation, preservation planning, the economics of preservation, and historic site management. His publications include The Once and Future New York: Historic Preservation and the Modern City (University of Minnesota Press, 2009); Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (with Max Page; Routledge, second edition, 2019); and Values in Heritage Management (with Erica Avrami, Susan Macdonald, and David Myers; Getty Publications, 2019). The UHP convened leading academics and practitioners from across the US in the wide-ranging 2024 symposium, What is the Future of Cultural Landscape Preservation?
The Department of Historic Preservation provides an integrated approach for architects, landscape architects, planners, historians, archaeologists, conservators, managers, and other professionals to understand, sustain, and transform the existing environment. Through coursework and partnerships with other national and international institutions and agencies, students have unparalleled opportunities for study, internships, and sponsored research, culminating in the one-year Master of Science in Design with a concentration in Historic Preservation or the two-year Master of Science in Historic Preservation. In addition to UHP and CPCRS, the Department operates two research facilities on Penn’s campus—the Architectural Conservation Lab and the Center for Architectural Conservation (CAC)—and produces Change Over Time (COT), a semiannual journal on the history, theory, and praxis of conservation and the built environment published by Penn Press. The CAC is directed by Gonick Family Professor of Historic Preservation Frank Matero, who is COT’s editor in chief.
Academic appointments are subject to review and approval by the School, provost, and the Board of Trustees.
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