HAITI: Earthquake Recovery
A partnership spanning earthquake recovery to the operation of a cultural conservation center
As a result of our work in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, the Smithsonian helped establish the emerging field of cultural heritage rescue.
Working together with Haitian colleagues, we led the first ever complex emergency response after the earthquake. The Smithsonian’s Haiti Cultural Recovery Project brought together several dozen Haitian, U.S. and international cultural organizations--governmental, professional and private. The Smithsonian hired more than 30 local staff including long-time Haitian cultural leaders, deployed some 140 conservators, curators and other experts, rented a U.N. building, and installed conservation labs and studios. The project treated, stabilized and re-housed more than 35,000 artworks, artifacts, rare books and archives, provided basic conservation and collection management training for more than 150 Haitian colleagues, improved collections care and storage at museums, archives and libraries, and established a Cultural Conservation Center at Quisqueya University in Port-au-Prince.
Outreach and recognition projects included museum exhibitions at the Smithsonian, the Clinton Presidential Library, and an art gallery as well as a book, public programs, lectures and a documentary nationally aired on the Smithsonian Channel.
SCRI worked with the Center to support the stabilization and salvage of cultural artifacts in Haiti affected by the earthquake of August 14, 2021. Trained in the First Aid for Cultural Heritage methodology after the 2010 earthquake, Conservation Center staff took the lead role in damage assessment, training, documentation and inventory of collection items, and repair of storage spaces.
With this preliminary work underway, the Center turned SCRI for help in finding damaged heritage sites in the mountainous terrain where mudslides blocked roads and made searches difficult. SCRI and its partner, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab (CHML), offered a preliminary cultural heritage impact assessment in a visual report to give teams a better idea of where to focus. Working with our Haitian colleagues, a model based on satellite imagery enabled damage assessment teams to respond in a rapid and focused way.
Learn about the origin of SCRI and the history of its partnership with Haiti: The Haitian Earthquake A Decade Later
Image: The Haiti Cultural Recovery Project constructed scaffolding as the first step to save surviving murals at Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Stephanie Hornbeck