Workshop topics

Module 1 (Day 1+2): Introduction to painting materials

Module 2 (Day 3): Diagnosis and study of damage in paintings

Module 3 (Day 4): Defining needs, priorities, and limits for sustainable conservation

Module 4 (Day 5): Tear mending

Module 5 (Day 6): Museum visits

Module 6 (Day 8+9): Lining techniques

Module 7 (Day 10): Backing

Module 8 (Day 11): Predictive analysis + preventive conservation

Module 9 (Day 12): Preventive conservation

Lecturers

Cecil Krarup Andersen, PhD. Associate professor, head of the Pictorial Arts Program, The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Cecil graduated from the School of Conservation, Copenhagen, in 2005 and received her PhD in the structure and mechanics of lined paintings in 2013 from the Royal Danish Academy in collaboration with Centre for Art Technological Studies (CATS) and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI). Cecil has extensive experience as a painting conservator from both private practices and museums. She has been teaching paintings conservation at the Royal Danish Academy since 2014 and has given specialized international workshops on the structural behavior of paintings. Her research focuses on mechanical degradation and the effect of structural conservation of canvas paintings as well as painting techniques in the 19th and 20th Century.

Laura Fuster-López, PhD. Professor, Dept. Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain.

Fuster-López graduated from UPV in Fine Arts (Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage) in 1999. In 2006 she received a PhD in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage after completing an internship at the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education focused on the study of the structural and dimensional behavior of filling materials for easel paintings. Fuster-López has been teaching canvas paintings conservation (theory and practice) since 2005 at UPV, and she has given specialized workshops on the structural behavior of paintings in several international training programs and research institutions. Her current research focuses on the mechanical and dimensional properties of cultural materials as well as environmental effects on their stability and preservation.

Mikkel Scharff, Associate professor, conservator, The Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Following studies in art history, at the University of Copenhagen (1973-1977), Scharff received a BSc in conservation in 1980 and a MSc in Conservation in 1987 from the School of Conservation. In 1987 he was employed as a lecturer, from 1992-2017 he served as head of the Pictorial Arts Program, he was vice-rector in 1992-2008, and head of the School of Conservation in 2013-2018. Scharff has been partner or coordinator in several national as well as international research, R&D or network projects including R&D projects with the Getty Conservation Institute, L.A., USA. He has been active in international conservation related agencies, such as board member of ICOM-CC for 9 years, council member of IIC for 12 years, and has co-organized about 20 international conferences on conservation subjects, most recently an IIC-conference about preventive conservation in Turin in 2018. Scharff has published around 50 papers, books, or book chapters on a variety of subjects, with emphasis on structural behavior and treatment strategies of canvas paintings and on aspects of preventive conservation. Furthermore, he has edited and peer-reviewed papers for several journals and conference proceedings, e.g., Studies in Conservation, Journal of Heritage Science, IIC- and ICOM-CC conference proceedings.

Matteo Rossi Doria, paintings conservator, Rome, Italy.

Doria has been a painting restorer since 1979. After a lengthy career as an independent conservator, he is now associate chief conservator of CBC Conservazione Beni Culturali, a large company with 40 years of experience in the conservation and restoration of the Italian Cultural Heritage. During his professional life he has dedicated serious attention to structural conservation (canvas paintings, panel paintings, paper large formats, leather, textiles), and has participated in developing scientific and professional projects to improve understanding and a more respectful approach in collaboration with national and international institutional partners. Matteo has been a teacher in structural painting conservation at the Università degli Studi de Tuscia (Viterbo). From 2003 to 2009 he was project manager for the Cesmar7 research plan “Colore e Conservazione”, focused on minimal treatments and consolidation of polychrome surfaces. In 2010, he was part of the staff of the ICOM-CC Paintings Group Workshop: Current Practice and Recent Developments in the Structural Conservation of Paintings on Canvas Supports held in Helsinki. For the Getty Conserving Canvas Initiative, he was consultant and co-coordinator of the initiatives “Structural Treatments on Double sided paintings” organized by CCR La Venaria Reale (2020) and “Water Based Adhesives in Paintings Structural Conservation” organized by Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica in Rome (2022).

Petra Demuth, Dipl.-Rest., lecturer at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS).

Demuth has been a painting conservator since 1994. She has been teaching at the course Restoration and Conservation of Paintings, Sculpture and Modern Art, at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS)/Technische Hochschule (TH) Köln, Germany, since 2003. Before this teaching position, she worked in cooperation with public institutions as a freelance painting conservator in Berlin and Munich. After years of various mandatory internships in paintings conservation studios (1986-1990) and her studies at CICS (1990-1994), she worked as a research assistant to Prof. Winfried Heiber in the painting conservation course at the study program Art Technology, Preservation and Restoration of Artistic and Cultural Assets at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, from 1994 to 2000. Her research focuses on damage phenomena and further development of refined conservation strategies for textile supports of canvas paintings. In particular, she has concentrated on tear closure as well as the flattening of impact-overstretched and gaping painting areas. Demuth has carried on the legacy of Prof. Winfried Heiber, the pioneer of the thread-by-thread tear mending method, while continuously implementing new developments into the teaching program, such as the latest tear mending research results from CICS.

Hannah Flock, Dr.-Ing. and M.A., lecturer at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS).
After two years of internships in a private conservation studio in Hanover as well as in the painting conservation studio of the Landesmuseum in Braunschweig, Flock studied Restoration and Conservation of Paintings, Sculpture and Modern Art at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS)/Technische Hochschule (TH), Köln. Simultaneously, Flock worked in the museum sector at the Museum Schnütgen in Cologne and at Artlab Australia, associated to the Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide. Since 2011, she has been working as a freelance conservator in national and international conservation and restoration projects as well as exhibitions. Based on her two years master’s project about adhesives for the single thread bonding technique, she began her research integrated in a cooperative PhD program together with the Chair of Applied Mechanics (LTM)/Saarland University and CICS in 2014. The PhD thesis about “Single Thread Bonding in Painting Conservation: Adhesives, Testing Systematics and Results” was finished in fall 2020. As part of her doctorate, she successfully completed postgraduate studies in engineering sciences with a focus on statics, mechanics of materials, properties of polymer materials, adhesives and adhesive technology, continuum mechanics, numerical mechanics, and experimental mechanics. In spring 2021, Flock completed her doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) in materials science and engineering (summa cum laude). Since 2015 she has been working as a part- and full-time research associate at CICS, with a focus on material testing in the natural sciences department (05/2015-12/2021), paintings department (since 04/2021) and different research projects.

Ana María García Castillo, PhD student, Dept. Conservación y Restauración de Bienes Culturales, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain.

Garcia Castillo is a conservator-restorer specialised in paper objects and paintings. She received her BA degree in 2011 from the Externado University of Colombia. In 2016, wishing to further her studies in Heritage Sciences, she finished her MA at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain. After completing the MA studies, she received two scholarships in Madrid in the paper conservation depts. at Museo Reina Sofia (2014) and at Museo de Artes Decorativas (2015). In 2018 she was appointed project specialist at the European Research Projects Unit of the UPV, where she drafted different European project proposals. Then between 2019 and 2022, she worked in the CollectionCare project developing management and research tasks and participating in the work package dealing with research on degradation modelling. In this framework, she is working on her doctoral thesis on the study of cracks in oil paintings on canvas, under the supervision of Prof. Fuster-López and Prof. Perles Ivars and completed a four-month doctoral research stay (2021) at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the supervision of Prof. Krarup Andersen and Prof. Scharff. She is currently working as an EU R&D project consultant at the Energy Storage and Conversion Group of the Instituto de Tecnología Química (UPV-CSIC) in Valencia, Spain.

Łukasz Bratasz graduated in physics from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland in 1996, and received a PhD in 2002 from the same university. In the same year, he joined the staff of the Jerzy Haber Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences. For many years, he headed the Laboratory of Analysis and Non-Destructive Testing of Artifacts in the National Museum in Krakow. He was the head of the Sustainable Conservation Lab at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University, between 2015-2018. Currently he is head of the Cultural Heritage Research group at the Jerzy

Haber Institute. His research and work as a consultant focus on the environmentally induced degradation of cultural heritage materials, risk assessment and design of sustainable methods of collection care, especially energy efficient strategies for climate control. He has taken part in or coordinated 31 national and international research projects in the field of cultural heritage.

Marion Mecklenburg, PhD. Former senior research scientist and assistant director for conservation research at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI), Maryland, USA.

Mecklenburg received his BSc, MSc and PhD in Engineering at the University of Maryland Civil Engineering Department, while simultaneously working with paintings conservation in private conservation studios. Mecklenburg worked at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) for twenty-three years and is renowned worldwide for his research on the mechanical behavior of art materials. He has published extensively on the effects of environmental factors on the dimensional and mechanical properties of solid materials, and as such laid the foundation for our understanding of the structural response of cultural heritage objects to changes in ambient climates.

Mecklenburg has held faculty positions at the University of Delaware Art Conservation Program, the University of Maryland Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Johns Hopkins University Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and served as Coordinator for the Smithsonian-Johns Hopkins Graduate Program for Material Science.

Daniel Sang-Hoon Lee, PhD. Associate professor, the Royal Danish Academy, Institute of Architecture and Technology.

Lee graduated as MEng Structural Engineering with Architecture from The University of Edinburgh in 2005. He received his PhD in construction methodology and structural behavior of fabric formed form-efficient reinforced concrete beam in 2011 from the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA). His primary areas of research are development of design and experiment methods using computational tools (based on Finite Element Models – FEM) with digital experimentation methods – from micro to macro levels, as well as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with both mechanical (structural) and environmental application for more strategic analysis of built forms at various scales.

Ángel F. Perles, PhD. Associate professor, Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain.

Ángel Perles received a MSc in Computer Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain, in 1994. He joined the Research Group on Fault Tolerance Systems where he got his PhD in Computer Engineering (UPV) in 2003. Since 2000 he has been an associate professor at UPV and lecturer at the BA program Electronic Engineering and MA programs Telecommunication Engineering and Informatics Engineering. He joined the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (ITACA-UPV) in 1999; his research focuses on discrete-event modelling and simulation, microcontroller-based embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, and the application of Low-Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) in cultural heritage monitoring. Ángel Perles has been a coordinator in regional, national, and international projects focused on the application of Internet of Things technologies to tourism and to cultural heritage preservation.

Tannar Ruuben, senior lecturer in paintings conservation, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Degree program in Conservation, Helsinki, Finland.

Tannar received his MSc in physics in 1992 from Tartu University, Estonia, a BA in paintings conservation from Espoo-Vantaa Polytechnic, Finland, and a MA in paintings conservation from University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Tannar started his professional career as a material scientist, worked at the Estonian National Board of Antiquities and as a director of National Conservation Centre KANUT in Estonia from 1998-2001. From 2001 until today, Tannar has worked as a senior lecturer in paintings conservation at the Metropolia UAS, teaching conservation of paintings on canvas (theoretical, practical, and analytical). From 1999-2008 Tannar was assistant coordinator and coordinator of ICOM-CC’s Working Group for Education and Training, from 2008-2014 assistant coordinator of the ICOM-CC’s Paintings Working Group, and from 2014-2020 a member of ICOM-CC Directory Board as treasurer. Tannar has worked as a member of scientific committees and has peer-reviewed scientific papers for online conservation publications on several occasions. He has been an invited guest lecturer and instructor in the Getty Foundation Conserving Canvas Initiatives, including the “Mist-Lining“ workshop in Maastricht (2019), Skokloster Castle Summer Institute (2019), the Courtauld Institute of Art and Royal Museum Greenwich joint workshop (2021) and the “Mist-Lining” online workshop, Maastricht (2021).