About Rescue Public Murals

Rescue Public Murals, based at the national nonprofit organization Heritage Preservation, will bring public attention to U.S. murals, document their unique artistic and historic contributions, and secure the expertise and support to save them.

The project was officially launched in December 2006. Assisted by a national committee of Advisers, including muralists, conservators, art historians, and public art professionals, Rescue Public Murals has established four initial goals:

Create a database of individuals and organizations crucial to saving murals to establish a national network.
Develop plans for identifying and documenting U.S. public murals and providing on-line access to them.
Prepare a list of “10 Highly Endangered Murals” and assess the condition of those murals.
Raise funds to continue Rescue Public Murals’ work of saving and documenting community murals.

While Rescue Public Murals recognizes the significant historic and artistic value of public murals within structures, the project’s initial priority will be murals that are outdoors and thus especially vulnerable.

Rescue Public Murals receives funding from the Getty Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Booth Heritage Foundation, and the Wyeth Foundation for American Art.

Co-Chairs:

Dr. Timothy W. Drescher, Independent Scholar, former co-editor of Community Murals magazine, Berkeley, California. Dr. Drescher has been studying and documenting community murals since 1972, was co-editor of Community Murals magazine from 1976 to 1987, and is the author of San Francisco Bay Area Murals: Communities Create Their Muses, 1904-1997. He wrote the Afterward to the revised edition of Toward A People’s Art, and consults and lectures widely on murals. Dr. Drescher has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Art History from the University of Wisconsin.

Will Shank, Independent Conservator and Curator, former Head of Conservation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California. Mr. Shank is a conservator and curator in private practice who was head of conservation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1990 until 2000. He was the recipient in 2005 of the Booth Family Rome Prize for Conservation/Historic Preservation at the American Academy in Rome, where he studied worldwide policies on the care of modern murals. Mr. Shank was trained in conservation at Harvard University, Villa Schifanoia in Florence, and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he also received an M.A. in art history.

Director:

Kristen Overbeck Laise, Heritage Preservation. Ms. Laise, Heritage Preservation's Vice President, Collections Care Programs, directs Rescue Public Murals. She most recently directed the Heritage Health Index, the first national survey of the condition of collections in U.S. museums, libraries, and archives. She previously coordinated the Conservation Assessment Program, a technical assistance program that provides professional conservation advice to small and mid-sized museums. Ms. Laise holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.