Contributors

Caroline R. Cartwright is the wood anatomist and a senior scientist in the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum. Her primary areas of scientific expertise cover the identification and interpretation of organic materials, including wood, charcoal, fibers, and macro-plant remains from all areas and time periods, mainly using scanning electron microscopy. Cartwright has led many teams of environmental scientists on archaeological projects in various parts of the world including the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe. Reconstructing past environments, charting vegetation and climate changes, and investigating bioarchaeological evidence from sites and data also form important aspects of her research. Before joining the British Museum, she was a lecturer in archaeological sciences at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Cartwright is the author or coauthor of more than 310 publications.

Marie Svoboda is a conservator in the Antiquities Conservation Department at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She received an MA from the Art Conservation program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, majoring in artifacts and minoring in paintings conservation. Focusing on the study of ancient materials, Svoboda joined the Getty in 2003. She is actively involved in various in-depth studies that pertain to her interest in ancient technology and pigment studies. She manages the APPEAR project, an international collaboration on the study of ancient funerary paintings.

Maria Victoria Asensi Amorós is an Egyptologist and wood anatomist who works with private collections, public museums, and international archaeological teams to identify wooden artifacts from different civilizations. Based in Paris, France, she is a scientific director of the Xylodata company, involved in wood anatomy identifications, and is an officeholder at IUFRO (International Union of Forest Research Organizations; 5.15.01, Wood Culture). Her involvement for the past twenty-five years in several archaeological programs in Egypt has made her an expert on wood from the Pharaonic to the beginning of the Islamic period, which led to the development of Xyloteca for the IFAO (French Institute of Oriental Archaeology, Cairo).

Christine Andraud is a physicist in the service of conservation sciences. She is a professor at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) and director of the Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation (CRC), a national organization carrying out research for the preservation of museum collections that is funded by the French Ministry of Culture, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and the MNHN. Andraud is a specialist in optics, with expertise in complex optical processes generated by light on heterogeneous surfaces; she is a master of optical modeling and optical measurements.

Julie Arslanoglu is a research scientist in the Department of Scientific Research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). She investigates the identification, interaction, and degradation of natural and synthetic organic materials including paints, coatings, and adhesives using mass-spectrometric, imaging, immunological, and DNA techniques. She is co-founder of Art Bio Matters, a coalition of scientists, conservators, historians, and curators focused on biological materials used to create cultural heritage, and of Art and Cultural Heritage: Natural Organic Polymers by Mass Spectrometry (ARCHE), a partnership between The Met and the University of Bordeaux, studying the material dimension of museum collections on a molecular level using mass spectrometry.

Lawrence M. Berman is John F. Cogan Jr. and Mary L. Cornille Chair, Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston. He received his PhD in Egyptology from Yale University in 1985. Before coming to the MFA in 1999, he was curator of Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He has worked on numerous exhibitions and gallery reinstallations and has written many books and articles. His latest book is Faces of Ancient Egypt (MFA Publications, 2022).

Christina Bisulca is the Andrew W. Mellon conservation scientist at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). She has a PhD in materials science and engineering through the heritage conservation science program at the University of Arizona, an MS in objects conservation through the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, and a BA in chemistry from Rutgers University. Prior to the DIA she worked in conservation at various institutions, including the Arizona State Museum (University of Arizona), the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the Freer Gallery of Art (Smithsonian Institution), and the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Courtney Books is associate painting conservator at the Saint Louis Art Museum and serves on the editorial board of Materia: Journal of Technical Art History. She maintains a strong interest in bio-art, mural and large-format paintings, and paintings on atypical substrates.

Cecilie Brøns is a senior researcher and curator at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. She is the director of an interdisciplinary research project on the polychromy of ancient art, “Sensing the Ancient World: The Invisible Dimensions of Ancient Art,” financed by the Carlsberg Foundation. She received her PhD in classical archaeology in 2015 from the National Museum of Denmark and the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research (CTR) at the University of Copenhagen. In 2017–18 she was a research fellow at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington, DC. Her research concentrates on the polychromy of ancient art, architecture, and textiles, particularly in relation to ancient sculpture, as well as on the effect of the senses on our perception of ancient art.

Lucile Brunel-Duverger is a physical chemist with a background in chemistry and archaeometry, specializing in the study of painting materials and craft-making practices developed during her work in laboratories and museums and, as part of her PhD, conducted at the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) on the polychromy of the Louvre “yellow coffins.” She acquired new skills in non-invasive techniques, such as hyperspectral imaging, while working on the FAYOUM Project and in her subsequent postdoctoral position at the Laboratoire d’Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale (LAMS) (CNRS, University of Pierre and Marie Curie [UPMC]). She joined the C2RMF Research Department in March 2024.

Thomas Calligaro is a physicist and research engineer at the French Ministry of Culture. He specializes in the development of new methods for the study of cultural heritage materials and, more particularly, analysis and imaging techniques by ion beams, X-radiography, luminescence, and reflectance. Part of the team who built the particle accelerator for the C2RMF, AGLAE, Calligaro currently works on its evolution through the development of a new line dedicated to PIXE imaging for large objects (PIXXL project; Equipex+ ESPADON). His research interests were initially focused on the composition and provenance study of gems and stones (ruby, emerald, garnet, quartz, obsidian, and more); he is now lending his expertise to the study of pigments on a variety of supports.

Silvia A. Centeno is a research scientist in the Department of Scientific Research at The Met, where she is responsible for investigating artists’ materials and techniques and deterioration processes in paintings, photographs, and works of art on paper. She has conducted research in a variety of topics, including heavy-metal soap deterioration in oil paintings; early pigment- and platinum-based photographic processes; daguerreotypes; and old master, modern, and contemporary paintings. She received a PhD in chemistry from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and started at The Met as an L. W. Frohlich Fellow, studying unusual gilding techniques in pre-Columbian metalwork.

Kate Clive-Powell is the project textile conservator at the University of Washington Libraries. She received her MPhil in Textile Conservation from the University of Glasgow. She completed a one-year ICON Textile Conservation internship at the Bowes Museum and St. Fagans National Museum of History, and a three-year Sherman Fairchild Textile Conservation Fellowship at the MFA, Boston.

Laura A. D’Alessandro has been head of the conservation laboratory at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago, since 1986. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Greek and Roman civilizations from the State University of New York at Albany and a degree in archaeological and ethnographic conservation from the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. D’Alessandro has served as project manager for various reinstallations of large-scale architectural sculptures, including oversized Assyrian reliefs and a sixteen-foot statue of Tutankhamun. She currently manages a multi-year project involving the stabilization, conservation, analysis, and display of eighth-century BCE glazed bricks from the Sin Temple at Sargon II’s palace at Khorsabad, Iraq. Her interests include the study of ancient glazes and pigments.

Susanne Ebbinghaus is the George M. A. Hanfmann Curator of Ancient Art and head of the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at the Harvard Art Museums. She received MPhil and DPhil degrees from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the art and archaeology of ancient Greece and the Middle East, with special interests in cross-cultural interaction, feasting, sculptural polychromy, and bronzes. She organized the exhibitions Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity (2007) and Animal-Shaped Vessels from the Ancient World: Feasting with Gods, Heroes, and Kings (2018) and participates in the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis (Türkiye).

Katherine Eremin is the Patricia Cornwell Senior Conservation Scientist at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. She has a PhD in geology from the University of Cambridge. She has been at the Straus Center since 2004, and previously worked at the National Museum of Scotland (1994–2003). Eremin focuses on the identification of inorganic materials in works of art, including Chinese jade and glass, wall paintings, and manuscripts.

Clara Granzotto is assistant conservation scientist in the Conservation and Science Department at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). She received her PhD in chemical sciences from the University of Venice, Italy, and the University of Lille, France. Granzotto conducted postdoctoral research at the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, the scientific department of The Met, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She specializes in the analysis of traditional binding media in works of art by mass spectrometry, with a focus on polysaccharides and proteins.

Charlotte Hale is a conservator who received her training in the conservation of paintings at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. In 1987 she joined the Department of Paintings Conservation at The Met, where she has focused on the technical examination and treatment of European nineteenth-century paintings. Recent publications include studies of works by Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, and van Gogh.

Ellen Hanspach-Bernal is a 2006 graduate of the art conservation program at the University of Fine Arts, Dresden. From 2006 to 2009 she was the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in painting conservation at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. She has worked for the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and for the Conservation Centre for the Museums of the City of Erfurt, Thüringen, in Germany. Hanspach-Bernal has been the paintings conservator at the DIA since 2015, where her work focuses on preserving, researching, and treating the paintings of the collection from the antiquities to the present. She also supervises and teaches postgraduate fellows to prepare a new generation of conservators for work in a museum environment. Most recently she has published on a Roman-period funerary portrait, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Max Ernst’s Surrealist painting techniques, and Pablo Picasso’s use of non-artist paints.

Richard Hark is a conservation scientist at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (IPCH), Yale University. After earning degrees in chemistry, Hark served as a chemistry professor for twenty-five years before moving to Yale in 2017 to focus his efforts on the scientific analysis of cultural heritage objects. He has worked on diverse projects involving the Vinland Map and its sister manuscripts, Tudor and Stuart portraiture, the Gutenberg Bible and related incunables, fifteenth-century tarocchi cards, portolan charts, wood analysis of early American mahogany furniture, and William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature.

Marsha Hill is an art historian, Egyptologist, and curator emerita in the Department of Egyptian Art at The Met. There she was concerned with the galleries of First Millennium BCE Egypt, and organized installations and exhibitions dealing with that period, including co-curating with Dorothea Arnold the 2000 New York version of Susan Walker’s exhibition Ancient Faces, originally held at the British Museum in 1997.

Agnieszka Kijowska graduated from the Art Conservation Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She is employed at the Conservation Workshop of Ancient Art and Stone Architecture of the National Museum in Warsaw, where she works on ancient artifacts of polychromed wood, ceramics, and wall painting. She has participated in archaeology-conservation missions in Egypt (Sakkara and Wadi Natrun) and is coauthor of articles about the conservation of wall paintings from the Faras Cathedral.

Daniel P. Kirby turned his interests to conservation after a career as an analytical chemist in semiconductor electronics, pharmaceuticals, and academic research. He currently works both in private practice and as a volunteer in the Scientific Research Lab at the MFA, Boston, specializing in applications of mass spectrometry in art and cultural heritage, with a particular interest in protein identification.

Justyna Kwiatkowska is a graduate in chemistry at Warsaw University and authored the MA thesis “LA-ICP-MS in the Study of Heterogeneous Historic Objects.” Since 2016 she has been a conservation assistant in the laboratory of the Conservation Department at the National Museum in Warsaw. From 2016 to 2019 Kwiatkowska participated in the project Henryk Siemiradzki’s Corpus of Painting Works. She conducts Oddy tests and physicochemical analyses of works of art using technological layer stratigraphy, microchemistry, and infrared reflection spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR).

Anne-Solenn Le Hô is senior conservation scientist at the National Center for Research and Restoration in French Museums (C2RMF/IRCP, PSL University, Paris). In charge of the painting group, she has extensive experience in interdisciplinary research on the characterization of painted materials and their interactions and alteration mechanisms. Her research interests are in the use of color and technical processes in paintings, polychrome objects, and lacquerware. She is also an associate editor, scientific member, and contributor to journals and books about cultural heritage, archaeometry, and art history.

Dorothy Mahon is a conservator in the Department of Paintings Conservation at The Met, where she has examined and conserved paintings spanning the collection since joining the staff in 1981. Recent publications focus on Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacques-Louis David, and John Singer Sargent. Mahon received her master’s degree in the history of art and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

William J. Mastandrea is currently working as an assistant conservator for the Ancient Near East and Cypriot Gallery renovation at The Met. Prior to joining the objects conservation department, he was the inaugural Gale R. Guild and Henry R. Guild Fellow for Advanced Training in Objects Conservation at the MFA, Boston. William received his MSc in Conservation for Archaeology and Museums from University College London. Combining his background in both conservation and archaeology, his research interests include the multi-band imaging, in-depth investigation, and treatment of archaeological objects and their pigments, binders, and other constituent materials.

Evelyn (Eve) Mayberger holds a BA from Wesleyan University and MA and MS degrees in art history and conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she specialized in objects conservation. She has worked in the conservation departments of Olin Library at Wesleyan University, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Historic Odessa Foundation, Small Collections Library at the University of Virginia, National Museum of the American Indian, Worcester Art Museum, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and MFA, Boston. In addition to museum work, she has participated in excavations at Sardis (Türkiye), Selinunte (Sicily), Abydos (Egypt), and el Kurru (Sudan). Currently, Mayberger is an assistant conservator at the MFA, Boston.

Joy Mazurek is an associate scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute. She specializes in the identification of binding media in paint using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, the characterization and degradation of plastics, and the application of biological methods to study artwork. She obtained her MS in microbiology from California State University, Northridge, and her BS in biology from the University of California, Davis.

Alicia McGeachy joined the Scientific Research Partnership (SRP) at The Met as an associate research scientist in May 2022. She received her PhD in chemistry from Northwestern University and a BS in chemistry from Spelman College. She was Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Scientific Research (2018–20), where her primary research focused on the analysis of eighteenth-century English ceramics with the goal of reconstructing the practices employed at the Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory. She continued her postdoctoral training (2020–22) with the Northwestern University–Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS). In her role with SRP, McGeachy applies her wide technical experience to the study of works in partnering cultural institutions to inform treatment and research and, more broadly, the stories that we can tell about ourselves. She has coauthored numerous articles.

Michel Menu, physicist, was director of the Research Department of C2RMF from 2001 to 2021. Today he is the director of the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Center (STARC) of the Cyprus Institute (Nicosia, Cyprus). Its main research focus is the color and appearance of painted works, considered to be “augmented art objects,” by the integration of data collected by a variety of disciplines.

Anne Michelin is an assistant professor at the MNHN in Paris and conducts research in the CRC. Her research focuses on the characterization of ancient materials and on the understanding of their alteration processes. She works on a team dedicated to the study of color and visual appearance of museum artifacts and develops non-destructive techniques such as hyperspectral imaging analysis. Her latest projects concern the analysis of ancient manuscripts with two objectives: to improve the legibility of the writing when the documents are faded or altered, and to characterize the material constituents to investigate the techniques involved in a manuscript’s creation.

Raphaël Moreau joined the Cyprus Institute as a PhD student in August 2020 after graduating with a master’s degree in analytical chemistry (2019) and a bachelor’s degree in physics and chemistry (2017). His work focuses on the use and development of analytical devices, combining several spectroscopic techniques such as X-ray fluorescence, photoluminescence, and optical reflectance. The treatment and understanding of the large amount of data gathered with such devices is another central point of his work, as these provide clues that lead to a deeper understanding of the stakes of cultural heritage material comprehension.

Richard Newman is the head of scientific research at the MFA, Boston, where he has worked as a research scientist since 1986. He holds a BA in art history from Western Washington University and an MA in geology from Boston University, and he completed a three-year apprenticeship in conservation and conservation science at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. He has carried out research on a wide range of cultural artifacts, from the stone sculpture of the Indian subcontinent to the paintings of Diego Velázquez. A coauthor of the chapter on adhesives and binders in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (Cambridge University Press, 2000), Newman has collaborated with conservators and curators on numerous projects involving ancient Egyptian and Nubian art.

Ioannis Panagakos is a conservator of antiquities, specializing in stone artifacts, at the Sculpture Conservation Lab of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. He earned his degree at the University of West Attica and furthered his studies with the completion of the postgraduate course in digital arts (MA) at the Athens School of Fine Arts. He is especially interested in the study of polychromed artifacts, 3D digital modeling, and virtual reassembly.

Irma Passeri is the Susan Morse Hilles Chief Conservator at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG). Passeri studied painting conservation at the Scuola di Alta Formazione at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD) in Florence, Italy, where she received her degree in the Conservation of Easel Paintings in 1998. She joined the conservation staff of the YUAG in 2000. Passeri has worked at the OPD and the Philadelphia Art Museum, among other institutions. She has published articles on materials and techniques of Italian paintings and different approaches to the restoration treatment of loss compensation.

Laurent Pichon has been a research engineer at the French Ministry of Culture since 1999. He works as an electronic and computer science engineer on the particle accelerator at the C2RMF, AGLAE. His work concerns the development of new analysis techniques and data processing software that are specially dedicated to the characterization of artworks. Initially, his field of expertise was ion beam applications, but he now works in service to the design and realization of innovative portable instruments, such as the XRF/RIS/PL/SWIR scanning device used in the study of the Fayum portraits from the Louvre collection.

Federica Pozzi is the director of scientific laboratories at the Centro per la Conservazione ed il Restauro dei Beni Culturali “La Venaria Reale,” Turin, Italy. She earned her PhD in chemical sciences in 2012 from the University of Milan. Prior to her current appointment, Pozzi held positions at The Met, City University of New York (CUNY), the American Institute of Conservation (AIC), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She was recently awarded Professional Membership of the AIC and a Fellowship of the IIC in recognition of her professional achievements and contributions to the conservation science profession.

Georgina Rayner is the associate conservation scientist at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, Harvard Art Museums. She holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Warwick, UK. Rayner specializes in the identification of organic materials at the Straus Center. She has worked on many technical investigations studying the materials used in artworks, including a survey identifying the plastics present in objects in the collection; John Singer Sargent’s paint palettes; and the pigments and binders used by Aboriginal artists in traditional bark paintings.

Corina E. Rogge is a conservation scientist and director of conservation at the Menil Collection, Houston. She earned a BA in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College, a PhD in chemistry from Yale University, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. Before joining the Menil Collection in 2023 Rogge served as the Andrew W. Mellon Research Scientist at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the Menil Collection (2013–23), and the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor in Conservation Science in the Department of Art Conservation at State University of New York Buffalo (2010–13). She is the vice president and fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and an associate editor for the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. She works on materials across all cultures, media, and ages, and is a coauthor of Franz Kline: The Artist’s Materials (GCI, 2022).

Rachel Sabino is director of Objects and Textiles Conservation at the AIC, where she has been a staff member since 2011. A specialist in structural issues related to large-scale objects, Sabino has previously held positions at the MFAH, the National Gallery London, and the Chicago Conservation Center; internships at The Met and the J. Paul Getty Museum; and a sabbatical at the Corning Museum of Glass. She received her training at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, UK, and is a fellow of the International Institute of Conservation and the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Anna Serotta is an associate conservator in the Department of Objects Conservation at The Met, specializing in the care and study of archaeological materials. Her primary role is as conservator for the Egyptian art collection. Serotta is also a lecturer at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center, a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and has worked as a field conservator on archaeological sites in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and Türkiye.

Louisa Smieska leads the Functional Materials Beamline at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source in Ithaca, New York. She is especially interested in applications of synchrotron radiation for the study of material cultural heritage. In 2016–17 she held an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Scientific Research at The Met, where she examined paintings and other objects with the museum’s Bruker XRF scanner.

Kate Smith is conservator of paintings and head of the paintings lab at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums. She received an MA in conservation from SUNY Buffalo in 2001 and previously worked at the MFA, Boston, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Smith studies and preserves the Harvard paintings collection, with works spanning from ancient Roman to modern and contemporary periods. She specializes in technical examination using radiography, infrared reflectography, and fluorescence imaging to investigate artists’ materials and techniques.

John Southon is a researcher in the Earth System Science Department, University of California, Irvine (UCI), and co-director of UCI’s W. M. Keck Carbon Cycle Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Laboratory. Prior to taking up the position at UCI, Southon helped design the AMS spectrometer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the mid-1980s and was head of the natural radiocarbon group at LLNL’s Center for AMS from 1989 to 2001. His interests include the development of AMS technology and applications of the technique in fields including archaeology, paleontology, paleoclimate, and paleoceanography.

Lin Rosa Spaabæk is a conservator at the Agency for Culture and Palaces in Copenhagen. She previously held a position at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, where she restored and studied their collection of mummy portraits. Spaabæk obtained her bachelor’s degree in paintings conservation and completed her master’s thesis on the study of mummy portraits at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Conservation, Copenhagen. She has recently completed a study of mummy portraits, materials, and painting techniques, supported by the Carlsberg Foundation.

Stephanie Spence is the assistant objects conservator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. She earned her MA in art conservation, specializing in objects conservation, from the Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Art Conservation Department at SUNY Buffalo in 2017. She completed her third-year internship at the Nelson-Atkins, and was the conservation fellow at the Toledo Museum of Art.

Aaron Steele has been the imaging specialist and photographer for the Conservation Department at the DIA since 2014. He has more than twenty years of experience in cultural heritage, museum, and art conservation imaging. He recently co-curated the 2019–20 DIA exhibition Bruegel’s The Wedding Dance Revealed, and contributed to the associated technical publication on the painting The Wedding Dance. His undergraduate and graduate education was at Indiana University focusing on art, art librarianship (visual resources), and art education. Prior to his current position at the DIA, he worked as associate photographer at the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC), as conservation department photographer and imaging specialist at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), and as photographer for the Lilly Rare Books Library at Indiana University. Steele has also worked at the Indiana University Art Museum (IUAM) in the curatorial, registration, and education departments.

Jens Stenger is a senior scientist at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, where he conducts research on the polychromy of ancient artifacts. He earned his PhD in physics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. He has held positions at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums, the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale University, the Swiss Institute for Art Research, and the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences.

Aleksandra Sulikowska-Bełczowska is a curator of the Collection of Ancient Art and the Collection of Eastern Christian Art at the National Museum in Warsaw, where she oversees Nubian, Coptic, and Ethiopian collections, as well as the Collection of Icons and Byzantine Crafts. She is also a professor in the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw. Sulikowska-Bełczowska has authored books and papers on the cult of images in late antique and eastern Christian art and the iconography of the icons and wall paintings in Orthodox art.

Ken Sutherland is Andrew W. Mellon Director of Scientific Research in the Department of Conservation and Science at the AIC. His primary research interests concern the characterization of organic materials in works of art to inform an understanding of their technique, condition, and appearance. He held previous positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. He received a PhD in chemistry from the University of Amsterdam, a diploma in the conservation of easel paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and a BSc in biochemistry from University College, London. His previous publications include “Challenges in the Characterization and Categorization of Binding Media in Mummy Portraits,” coauthored with Rachel Sabino and Federica Pozzi, in Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2020).

Jevon Thistlewood is the conservator of paintings at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, and is an accredited member of the Institute of Conservation (ICON). He graduated from the University of Leeds with degrees in chemistry and sculpture studies, and he has a master’s degree in the Conservation of Fine Art (Easel Paintings) from the University of Northumbria. Thistlewood’s research interests are wide and varied, and often relate to paintings from antiquity to the present.

Caroline Thomas is curator for Egyptian art at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where she oversees the Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, and Sudanese collections. In addition to her work on mummy portraits and panels of gods, her research focuses on First Millennium BCE cartonnages, coffins, and funerary practices. Before joining the Louvre in 2018 she worked for the C2RMF, where she developed her expertise in conservation sciences. She trained at the École du Louvre, Sorbonne University (Paris), and Lille University in art history, Egyptology, and museology.

Jen Thum is associate director of Academic Engagement and Campus Partnerships and research curator at the Harvard Art Museums. She holds a PhD in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University and an MPhil in Egyptology from the University of Oxford. Thum creates interdisciplinary learning experiences for students across the university, teaches about museum pedagogy for the Harvard Graduate School of Education, delivers programs and workshops about object-based learning, and researches and teaches with the museums’ ancient Egyptian collection. She is committed to celebrating the learning potential of art and artifacts for students and the public.

Aurélie Tournié obtained a PhD in physical chemistry in January 2009 from the Laboratoire de Dynamique, Interactions et Réactivité at CNRS and University of Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC; Paris 6). She held three postdoctorate positions from 2009 to 2012, during which she acquired expertise in the characterization, by vibrational spectroscopies (Raman and IR), of inorganic and organic materials in the laboratory and on-site. She is currently research engineer at the CRC where her main projects develop optical and spectroscopic methods, in particular hyperspectral imaging applied to cultural heritage objects and materials.

Peppy Tsakri is a conservator of antiquities and works of art in the Department of Conservation and Physical-Chemical Research and Archaeometry at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. She received an MSc in conservation science from De Montfort University in the United Kingdom.

John Twilley is the Mellon Science Advisor to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. His work has focused on the application of microanalytical techniques to the history of artists’ materials, their alterations by time and environmental effects, artwork attributions, and the development of treatment methods.

Jan M. van Daal currently works for the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. He obtained his BAs in Archaeology and Prehistory and Latin Language and Culture, and his MSc in Technical Art History from the University of Amsterdam. In May 2025 he obtained his PhD from Utrecht University after completing a dissertation on long-term investments and risk analysis in medieval west European art production, as part of the ERC-DURARE project. He has fulfilled several voluntary board functions in the humanities and cultural sector and continues to do so. Van Daal’s main research interests lie with painted portraits from Roman Egypt, medieval Latin, and art technological source research.

Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter is the Richard E. Perry Curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Tampa Museum of Art, Florida. He received his PhD in ancient history from the City University of New York (2007), where he specialized in queenship during the period from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra. Before coming to Tampa, van Oppen worked for five years at the Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam. His academic interests include clay seal impressions, animals in ancient material culture, and Romano-Egyptian funerary portraits, as well as ancient religion and art history in general.

Marc Vermeulen is the head of Heritage Science and Conservation Research at the National Archives (TNA). He earned his PhD in chemistry from the University of Antwerp in 2017, specializing in the study of arsenic sulfide pigments. Before joining TNA, he worked at the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts (NU-ACCESS), where he contributed to various projects, including the material characterization of Fayum portraits. Vermeulen has coauthored thirty-five peer-reviewed scientific papers concerning heritage science and conservation techniques, pigment and colorant analysis, analytical methodologies and data processing, and material characterization and degradation studies. His research integrates scientific analysis and cultural heritage preservation, advancing the understanding and conservation of historical materials.

Giovanni Verri has been a conservation scientist in the Department of Conservation and Science at the AIC since 2019. He holds a PhD in physics from the University of Ferrara, Italy, and an MA in the conservation of wall paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. In 2007, he developed an imaging technique called visible-induced luminescence imaging, through which it is possible to map the presence of Egyptian blue, a very commonly used blue pigment in antiquity, even when otherwise invisible to the naked eye. His research interests include the development and application of investigative techniques for the analysis of color. With a focus on the ancient Mediterranean, Verri also studies how materials and techniques are shared across different media and their relationship with primary written sources.

Barbara Wagner is a chemist and professor in the Laboratory of Theoretical Aspects of Analytical Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Warsaw. She received her master’s from the Faculty of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw with highest honors. As head of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Archaeometric Research at the University of Warsaw Biological and Chemical Research Centre, she is actively involved in the Polish Distributed Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science project (http://www.e-rihs.pl/). She has authored papers about the use of micro- and non-destructive spectral methods in the analysis of cultural heritage objects.

Marc Walton joined the Museum Studies program at the University of Hong Kong in the fall of 2024 as a professor. Prior to this, he held senior leadership positions at Hong Kong’s M+ (head of conservation and research) and worked in academia as co-director of NU-ACCESS, where he was also research professor of materials science. He led multiple scientific projects investigating art objects in collaboration with cultural heritage institutions representing a broad range of disciplines at NU-ACCESS, from anthropology to contemporary art, with broad geographical reach. Walton’s areas of research have focused primarily on the manufacture and trade of archaeological objects and on developing imaging technologies in the field of conservation science. He has more recently delved into sustainable collections care. These efforts have resulted in over one hundred peer-reviewed articles.

Alison Whyte is senior conservator of objects at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures at the University of Chicago where she has specialized in the preservation of archaeological material from West Asia and North Africa since 2001. A professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation, she is a graduate of the Queen’s University Master of Art Conservation Program and holds a BA in anthropology from the University of British Columbia and an MA in ancient studies from the University of Toronto.

Marcie Wiggins is an assistant conservation scientist and the Diana Luv Chen Fellow in the Technical Studies Lab working on material characterization for Yale’s collections. She received her PhD in analytical chemistry at the University of Delaware in 2019, studying copper-based pigments via spectroscopic methods and collaborating with Winterthur Museum. Marcie has held internships at the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, and the Rijksmuseum. She started at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in 2019 as a postdoctoral associate focused on large-scan X-ray fluorescence mapping and data processing.

Magdalena Wróbel-Szypula works in the Department of Conservation laboratory of the National Museum in Warsaw. She specializes in the analysis of organic compounds present in historical artifacts using FTIR spectroscopy. She obtained her PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Leeds and an MSc in chemistry, with specialization in analytical chemistry, from the University of Silesia in Katowice.