ICOM-CC is coming to Norway

14 – 18 September 2026

ICOM-CC is coming to Norway

14 – 18 September 2026

The ICOM-CC Triennial Lecture 2026

The Triennial Lecture is a signature moment of every ICOM-CC Triennial Conference. Delivered in the opening Plenary Session, it brings the global conservation community together around a single, future-facing reflection from a leader whose work has shaped the field in substantive and lasting ways. The Lecture took on a formal form at the Rio de Janeiro conference in 2002, and it has served as a platform for examining the profession’s trajectory, its evolving challenges, and the collaborative systems required to sustain cultural heritage worldwide.
The Directory Board is pleased to announce that Antoine Wilmering (Retired, formerly the Getty Foundation) has accepted our invitation to serve as the Triennial Lecturer for the 21st Triennial Conference in Oslo in September 2026. His lecture will be delivered on Monday, 14th September as part of the inaugural plenary session of the Conference. A long-term supporter of ICOM-CC and a respected figure across the international conservation landscape, and a conservator in his own right, Wilmering has spent more than three decades advancing conservation knowledge, training, and professional capacity. His stewardship of major global initiatives during his tenure at the Getty Foundation has strengthened the profession’s infrastructure and expanded access to high-quality education and research across regions and disciplines.
His lecture will offer an opportunity for the field to reflect on its collective progress and consider the strategies needed to meet emerging demands. We look forward to his contribution and to the substantive dialogue it will inspire at the 2026 Triennial Conference.

Antoine (Ton) Wilmering

Antoine (Ton) Wilmering is an international conservation consultant with a four-decade career in the heritage preservation field.

In 2024, he retired from his position as senior program officer at the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles where he oversaw grant initiatives related to the conservation of cultural heritage. Between 2004 and 2024, he managed an international grant portfolio that included Keeping It Modern, and multi-year initiative aimed at advancing the care and conservation of twentieth-century architecture from around the world, as well as the Panel Paintings Initiative and Conserving Canvas, two grant initiatives focused on building capacity in the structural care and conservation of paintings. He taught conservation at the Graduate Institute of Conservation of Cultural Relics at the Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan from 2000 to 2004 and was a conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and at Palace Het Loo in the Netherlands, between 1983 and 2000.

His publications include — Moderne Architektur erhalten: Warum Standards wichtig sind, Bauhaus Standard No.10, pp. 95-97, December 2018. Keeping It Modern: A Getty Foundation Initiative to Preserve 20th-Century Architecture. Built Heritage 2, 103–104, June, 2018. The Getty’s Panel Paintings Initiative: an overview, Opificio delle Pietre Dure Restauro, Florence, Volume 25, 2013, pp. 89-98. “Traditions and Trends in Furniture Conservation”, in: Reviews in Conservation (5), IIC, London, 2004, pp. 23-37. (Re-published by the Wooden Artifacts Group of the American Institute for Conservation in 2005). “The Gubbio Studiolo and its Conservation: Italian Renaissance Intarsia and the Conservation of the Studiolo”, Volume II, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, December 1999. November 2001, recipient of the Salimbeni Prize for Art History and Art Criticism (Premio Salimbeni per la Storia e la Critica d’Arte 2001).

Wilmering now lives in the Netherlands where he, together with his wife, is restoring their 1889 home, The Rectorate building of former Convent Mariadal in Venlo.