Kelly McHugh

Kelly McHugh recently became the Head of Conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian.  Prior she served as the Head of the Collections Care and Stewardship department and as an Objects Conservator in the NMAI Conservation department.  She began working for the museum in 1996 at NMAI’s Research Branch facility in NY.  Kelly focuses her work on the development of collaborative conservation practices for the care of Native American and Indigenous collections.  She continues to work toward shared stewardship through collections access, cultural protocol policy and artistic revitalization.  She was a core member in the development of the SAR Guidelines for Collaboration and serves on the Smithsonian’s Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns implementation group.