Eczema flare-ups, allergies, jackhammer sounds, and a lack of proper equipment are among the complaints from students in the Master of Art Conservation program.
Queen’s is home to Canada’s only Master of Art Conservation program, where students can specialize in preserving paintings, artifacts, and paper objects, or conduct research in conservation science. With a $75 million USD donation from Bader Philanthropy Inc. towards the Agnes Reimagined project, the program will establish a new building featuring larger laboratories and workspaces, facilitate the purchase of new equipment, and the hiring of additional professors.
READ MORE: Agnes Etherington Art Centre to undergo $100M transformation into dream art house
During the construction of the new building on 15 Bader Ln., which is expected to take two years to complete. Classes for the program were planned to be moved to Fleming Hall in the Jemmett Wing, however, the space infrastructure wasn’t in good enough condition to accommodate the expensive artwork, according to Quinn*, a student in the program.
In response to this issue, the University moved the program to Innovation Park, an off-campus facility. Much like Fleming Hall, it was unprepared for the students’ return in September. Consequently, the University cancelled the program’s labs for September, having completed the facility for an Oct. 4 start, Quinn told The Journal in an interview.
According to Quinn, the lab work is a major component of the students’ coursework, comprising about 70 percent of their curriculum. Students had to cancel their reading week and extend their programs into December to make up for the lost time.
Even though students have now started doing their labs at Innovation Park, concerns and problems persist, with Andreea Nita, a second-year Masters student in the program, expressing some of their concerns.
“One of the biggest ones that I’m quite in awe that the University hasn’t responded to yet is the obvious health and safety risks. There have been concerns about eczema flare-ups, a lot of allergies, and being in a space that has hanging wires as you’re walking in. It’s just not addressed and feels like we’ve been forgotten about,” Nita said in an interview with The Journal.
Nita explained how poor facilities are impacting their educational quality, emphasizing concerns of missing equipment for the program and how this could negatively affect internship opportunities after graduation.
“I think it’s fair to ask for a refund on tuition because we haven’t received the education we were promised,” Nita said.
“The issue right now is that we feel like there’s a separation between us and the istration—our voices aren’t being heard, but we are willing to get together and come up with solutions together to fix this issue. We just want to be heard together as the whole program,” Nita said.
Quinn echoed Nita’s concerns about health hazards, noting excessive dust in the facility is problematic and some rooms are as cold as five degrees Celsius. They said constant drilling, jackhammering, and other construction noise are mentally taxing while emphasizing issues the program is facing in providing necessary materials and equipment.
“We’ve received our chemicals, but half of them are broken or in an unusable state. It’s just been a constant issue, we don’t have any of our analytical equipment, the stuff we do have is trickling in at a snail’s pace, most of our study collection has been moved over, and we’ve only just found most of our conservation materials that we use, it’s been pretty terrible,” Quinn said.
Quinn explained while faculty specific to the Master of Art Conservation program are putting in hard work to improve upper istration from the University haven’t been helpful.
“From the University side, we got a placid response from the Dean’s [Norman Vorano] office after our first letter that was an acknowledgement of all the things we said with no action involved,” Quinn said, urging the University to personally come and see the conditions of their lab space.
“Come talk to us, come see what it’s actually like to be in here. It’s noisy, it’s dusty, it’s unpleasant, it’s a bad space, and ignoring us isn’t going to help because we’re going to keep asking for basic necessities,” Quinn said.
The Journal reached out to Vorano, the department head of Art History and Art Conservation through the University for comment but didn’t receive a response in time for publication.
*Name changed for safety reasons
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Norman Vorano
The article states, “The Journal reached out to Vorano, the department head of Art History and Art Conservation through the University for comment but didn’t receive a response in time for publication.”
This is a misleading statement.
The Queen’s Journal never reached out to me directly prior to the publication of this article. I had no awareness whatsoever that the Queen’s Journal was writing this article prior to its publication.