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Saira Haqqi (she/they) is the supervisory book and paper conservator at the Minnesota Historical Society, where she manages a busy conservation lab preserving general and special collections items for exhibit, digitization, and researcher access.
Her prior conservation experience includes working at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the Weissman Preservation Center at Harvard University, among others.
Saira has Master’s degrees in Art Conservation and Art History from New York University and received her Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from Carleton College.
You can’t pour from an empty cup. But within predominantly white institutions, where can staff of color turn to fill our cups? How do we recharge, restore, and reconnect? At the Minnesota Historical Society, the People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) Employee Resource Group has been experimenting with different ways to create space and care for each other. We’ll share strategies we’ve implemented, their advantages and pitfalls, and our lessons learned. And, importantly, we’ll explore how to do this without overextending ourselves even more.