The North American Vexillological Association actively promotes conservation, preservation, and restoration of historic flags by raising and granting funds for museums and other repositories and by lending its name in support of these efforts. The Flag Conservation Committee awards the Grace Rogers Cooper Flag Conservation Grant for these efforts. The grant is named in memory of Grace Rogers Cooper, a longtime Smithsonian Institution curator and U.S. textile expert, known for her seminal 1973 work Thirteen-Star Flags: Keys to Identification, which exposed a number of "antique" flags as modern replicas. She was a president of NAVA and editor of NAVA News, and honored as a Whitney Smith Fellow.