Alison Gilchrest , Treasurer

Alison Gilchrest is the inaugural Director of Applied Research and Outreach at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH). In this role, she facilitates sustained research and training partnerships between IPCH and communities of practice, with an emphasis on collaborations outside of North America and Europe. Prior to arriving at Yale, Alison was Program Officer for Arts and Cultural Heritage at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where she stewarded the largest US-based grant program focused on the art historical, curatorial, scholarly research, art conservation, and the heritage science domains. For nearly two decades, she has led national and international initiatives to make progress on issues such as diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion across art museums and art conservation, cultures of museum knowledge management, Native and Indigenous cultural heritage, art of Africa and its diasporas, academic museum and library collaboration, scholarship and preservation of time-based media and contemporary art, financial literacy and emergency preparedness for cultural non-profits, and object-based humanities curriculum in higher education.  She also led a pivotal research effort to understand the scope, impact, and financial implications of 50 years of endowment funding across the museum sector. An enthusiastic generalist by specialty, Ms. Gilchrest has previously held research and technical positions in art history and conservation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds an AB in the History of Art from Bryn Mawr College and an MSIS in Museum Information Systems from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science. She currently serves on the boards of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia, PA; and Voices In Contemporary Art (VoCA).