The Honorable Dithny Joan Raton, Haitian Minister of Culture, visited the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH) on May 5, 2015, to discuss the possibility of developing partnerships in capacity building in historic preservation and conservation.
In the new IPCH Conservation Laboratory, the Minister and her delegation viewed several 19th-century portraits of Haitian heads of state by the artist Louis Rigaud while Matthew Cushman, IPCH Conservator, described the conservation treatment of the paintings and the training of conservation assistants visiting IPCH from Haiti. The treatment of these important Haitian paintings, which are held in the collection of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, and the training of Haitian conservation assistants were carried out in close collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. The project also involved experts from IPCH, Yale University Art Gallery, Yale Center for British Art, and Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.