Class of 2010

This past summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern in the conservation lab at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. As an aspiring art conservator, I was exposed to a variety of mediums and treatments ranging from cleaning life-size earthenware statues to x-raying a basket comprised entirely of burrs to adhesive removal on Everett Shinn prints. The most exciting project that I worked on throughout the summer was the treatment of a painting by the American Impressionist painter William Dodge. After writing the condition report, I removed the canvas from the stretcher bars in order to clean and mend the tears in the fabric. After re-stretching the canvas, I had to inpainted areas of lost pigment. When not doing hands on treatments, I attended curatorial meetings, learned the format for writing museum condition and treatment reports, or went to conservation conferences. One thing that surprised me about this internship was the amount of scientific analysis that was used to determine the best treatment option. Working one-on-one with different conservators gave to the opportunity to see many aspects of the profession and has only strengthened by resolve to pursue a career in art conservation.