How would you describe your job to someone standing behind you in the grocery checkout line?
I am a conservator of art on paper. I repair damaged objects ranging from Walt Disney animation cells to Rembrandt drawings, postage stamps to wallpaper, and celestial globes to Japanese woodblock prints. As a conservator I am also responsible for determining and maintaining safe storage environments that slow down natural aging of art objects. Finally I conduct research concerning chemical degradation processes of paper and media such as ink or watercolor.

What is your educational background?
After finishing Hageveld atheneum in Haarlem, the Netherlands I finished the four-year graduate program at the National Conservation School in Amsterdam. What path did you take to get where you are now? I have held internships with private conservators in The Netherlands and France and with the British Museum in London. For three years I was a Mellon Fellow for the Paper Conservation Department at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Before my current position as a Senior Paper Conservator at the Library of Congress I worked at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Boijmans Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

How did you get your current job?
I applied to this job after colleagues at the Library of Congress inquired whether I would be interested in the job.

What do you consider to be your key career decisions?
The most important career decision has been to accept the Mellon Fellowship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. It required me to move from the Netherlands to the US but I have never regretted my decision. The Mellon Fellowship enabled me to conduct research into paper degradation and have the results published by the National Gallery. My experience at the Gallery has proven to be a great asset both in treatment experience and in setting up your research projects. I also believe that having worked at the Gallery made me a serious candidate for any position I subsequently applied.

What is your ultimate career goal?
Let me first say that I am very content with my current position. I can combine conservation treatments with conservation research, which, to my mind, is the best part of being a conservator. However, within the next fifteen years I hope to manage a (paper) conservation department in a major museum.

What kinds of people do well in your company/organization?
Most conservators are highly skilled professionals. They keep up to date on the latest developments in the field by attending conferences and workshops and reading conservation journals. Those conservators who can handle both the daily workload and find time to conduct research and present and/or publish their findings are among the most respected in the field.

What scientific backgrounds does your company look for?
All conservators must have a thorough knowledge of chemistry usually through a BS. Conservation scientists usually have a master's degree in chemistry and often a post-graduate degree. What is your typical day like? A conservator in the Library of Congress usually works on various projects at any given time. Presently I am repairing a Walt Disney drawing of the Seven Dwarfs from the Snow White animation movie, flattening rolled-up Ray and Charles Eames architectural drawings and researching early 20th century photographic reproduction techniques. In between these projects I need to make time to have our environmental monitoring system in our off-site storage facility in Landover working again, design a conservation report database and make preparations to give an inpainting (retouching) workshop in Switzerland.

What do you like about your job? What don't you like?
To breathe new life into an object that can best be described as a total wreck is one of the best things of my job. You get a real sense of your work when you're comparing the before and after treatment photographs. I would be very hard pressed to find something I do not like about my job. Working for an exhibition deadline and treating all objects in time for an opening can be a stressful experience. But when everything is hanging on the wall and the exhibition is a success most is forgotten.

What have been your most interesting projects or opportunities?
My most recent project has been a study into the degradation of iron gall ink, a process known as ink corrosion. Iron gall ink was the writing ink of preference from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century. Documents like the Declaration of Independence have been written in this type of ink. Unfortunately the high acidity and the excess amount of iron in the ink make it rather unstable, sometimes causing the ink to "eat" its way through the paper or vellum support. A safe treatment that stops the corrosion but does not change the appearance of the ink is still being investigated.

If you had it all to do over again, what would you do differently about your career?
Very little. I am frightfully content with the direction my career has taken me.

Who are your role models?
No idea

What do you do when you're not at work?
I try to collect 19th century German toy stone building blocks, called Richter's Anchor building blocks, of which I never have seem to have enough. The blocks were made from a mixture of clay, sand and linseed oil. The blocks come in over 2000 different shapes, enabling you to replicate any type of building. They were so popular that at the end of the 19th century Anchor blocks were the biggest export product of Germany. Not bad for a toy.

What is the most rewarding thing about what you do?
Knowing that my efforts help in protecting our cultural heritage for future generations is an amazing thing.

What advice do you have for others who want a job like yours?
Start a career in conservation as early as possible. You will need to gain experience before you can get accepted to any of the conservation graduate schools. By the time you've finished school, various internships and/or fellowships you might have invested three to six years into this line of work. Knowing that salaries in art conservation never keep up with comparable professions in other sectors you have to be very sure about your decision to enter the conservation field. Most conservators love their work which makes monetary compensation perhaps less important.

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