"What I find lacking in media archive preservation programs [...] are courses on the principles, ethics, history, and theory of art conservation. I don’t think there are any core courses on what art conservation is as a field and the approach that a conservator has towards an artwork, which is an approach with a strong ethical base of respecting the integrity of artwork based on the principles that are spelled out in the AIC code of ethics, and then applying them to new forms of art—variable art, performance art, media art."

Glenn Wharton is Professor of Art History and a Professor of Conservation of Material Culture at UCLA, and Chair of the UCLA/Getty Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials. From 2007-2013 he served as Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he established the time-based media conservation program for video, performance, and software-based collections. He founded the North American group of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA-NA) in 2006, and served as its first executive director until 2010. His current research is on the life of complex artworks in museums in which he engages contemporary debates around object biographies, intentionality, authorship, and authenticity. Dr. Wharton received his Ph.D. in Conservation from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and his M.A. in Conservation from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in New York. Visit Wharton's personal website at: https://glennwharton.net/