Penn’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design has joined an academic partnership with the World Monuments Fund.
The Fund, founded in 1965, seeks to preserve global cultural heritage sites. Penn will collaborate with the WMF’s new Suzanne Deal Booth Institute for Heritage Preservation, which aims to integrate education with preservation projects.
The partnership aims to bring the Fund’s resources and academic collaborations under a “single framework” that advances “new initiatives that promote workforce development, greenspace stewardship, and digital preservation,” according to the Almanac.
Penn joins four universities in the United States, Canada, and the Kurdistan region of Iraq in the collaboration.
“We are honored to be working with WMF and building on a years-long relationship,” Penn professor and Chair of the Department of Historic Preservation at the School of Design Randall Mason wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “The Suzanne Deal Booth Institute will help create so many research and educational opportunities.”
“[The WMF’s] community focus is exemplary, and their priorities are those that Penn shares,” Anthropology professor Lynn Meskell — who served as the chair of the WMF’s 2025 World Monuments Watch Selection Panel — wrote in the Almanac.
“The institutional alignment is reflected in the department of historic preservation’s ongoing commitment to numerous sites highlighted by WMF over the last 30 years,” the Almanac posting read. “Faculty, students, and staff have worked to preserve sites ranging from the Nakashima House in nearby Bucks County, Pennsylvania to Herculaneum, Italy, and the historic city of George Town, Malaysia.”
Meskell — whose work includes surveying the efficiency of international organizations in addressing community needs following the Islamic State’s campaign against heritage sites in Iraq and Syria — added that “this collaboration is needed more now than ever.”
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The WMF began its work conserving sites damaged by the 1966 Venice floods in Italy, and has a global network of affiliate offices overseeing preservation projects.
“I have always admired the courage and commitment of WMF in supporting those working at sites affected by conflict, whether in Palestine, Ukraine, Iraq, Cambodia, or Kashmir,” Meskell wrote.
Mason continued, “Professor Meskell’s international work, our department’s varied research tracks, and the global ambitions of our students and graduates make this partnership a very natural fit.”
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Staff reporter José Carlos Serrano contributes to data and enterprise reporting and can be reached at serrano@thedp.com. At Penn, he studies English and political science.
