Recently, our group of fellows visited the conservation department at Winterthur in Wilmington, Delaware.  This site consists of a museum, gardens, and state-of-art conservation facility all housed at the Henry du Pont family estate.  Winterthur maintains the nineteenth-century original mansion as well as sixty acres of gardens.  Inside the estate is one of the most impressive collections of American decorative arts, featuring tens of thousands of objects including furniture, textiles, paintings and everyday artifacts.  Notably, the conservation department also hosts one of just four graduate programs in art conservation in the United States, a world-renowned program through Winterthur and the University of Delaware.

On our visit to the museum, we were welcomed by conservation scientists, as well as Debra Hess Norris, photography conservator and Department Chair.  She shared her passion for photography, stressing the importance of this sector of conservation.  While this field is still relatively new to many of us, the photography presentation was eye-opening because we all take  photographs.  What do photographs mean for us and for people all over the world?  As millennials, the medium of photography has changed drastically in our generation, from film cameras to cell phones.  We know what it’s like to have just one photograph copy from our childhood, whereas now we can reproduce an image digitally as often as we want.  Our images mostly exist as files in cyberspace, not as printed physical copies.

Just as technology changes drastically over a couple short decades, conservators are just a step behind, doing whatever problem-solving is necessary to preserve the primary documents that are objects from the past, whether a printed photograph, or digital file.  Over the course of the day, we met many conservators, including objects and painting conservators, as well as the conservation scientists whose analytical techniques provide a backbone for conservation problem-solving.  With each conversation with the conservators, we learned about their patterns of decision-making, specific to each object’s treatment.  While our SCIART program seeks to help answer questions posed by challenges in conservation, we students came to the program with mostly experience in the sciences.  This visit to Winterthur gave us insight into the conservator’s approach, which is different from that of a scientist.  Similar, yes, but different.  Understanding the kinds of questions conservators ask when considering an object is essential to the success of our conservation science research.  Needless to say, this trip was invaluable to our understanding of the bigger picture.