Search this site

41dbb70e-1ab8-45b0-a037-525495f1dc15 Laura Allen Curator of Native American Art Montclaire Art Museum Montclair, NJ, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Laura J. Allen is an interdisciplinary scholar and the Curator of Native American Art at the Montclair Art Museum. She holds a B.S. in Biology from Bates College and an M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center. Her research focuses on Northwest Coast Native material culture, particularly dress and textiles. She has supported the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Alaska Museum of the North, and other organizations in both cultural and scientific projects. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2021 Participant Art Bio Matters 2021 Virtual Conference Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

70ef1c89-7d4f-4776-ac96-fa926941131d Daniella Berman Vice President Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION An art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, Daniella Berman has a particular interest in artists’ materials and techniques. Having earned her B.A. at Yale University and her M.A. and Ph.D. at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, Dr. Berman has held positions at the National Gallery of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. She has contributed to many exhibitions and publications, and is currently Vice President of the Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA). ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2023 Participant Art Bio Matters 2023 Conference Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

d86031bd-b787-4731-8218-54cd3d3e7fd5 Halina Piasecki New York University - Institute of Fine Arts New York, NY, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Halina Piasecki (she/her) is a third-year objects conservation graduate student at the Conservation Center at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. Halina's background is in classical languages, art, and archaeology. Her special interests within objects conservation include Greek and Roman archaeological artifacts, composite decorative arts objects, and 15th - 18th century objects displayed in northern European kunstkammern. Halina has worked in conservation roles at institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Chinese in America, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, and the Central Park Conservancy. Halina has participated in three different archaeological excavations, and is especially interested in the ethical considerations at play in the extraction and preservation of archaeological cultural heritage from its burial context. She is also an artist working with diverse media, and in her free time she enjoys wheel throwing ceramics, drawing, printmaking, and classical goldsmithing. Halina has limited technical analytical experience and is excited to gain insight from the Art Bio Matters community. ABM CONFERENCES ABM MEMBER EVENTS ABM Round Table - July 2024 Round Table Presenter ABM Round Table - July 2024 How to identify organic residues preserved within the pipe bowls to investigate the object’s history and material evidence of modern opium smoking practices. Explore PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

ecb53a9d-44a7-4ead-8f96-5ff53d262b2d Camilla Jul Bastholm Head of Collection Storage and Curation The National Museum of Denmark Copenhagen, Denmark Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Experienced Conservator PhD with a strong history of working with museums and cultural heritage. Skilled in preservation of cultural heritage, research, indoor air, fungal analysis, preventive conservation, working environment, museum exhibitions, and disaster management of cultural heritage with focus on rescue and recover damaged cultural heritage due flooding, fires, and natural disasters related to climate change. ABM CONFERENCES ABM MEMBER EVENTS ABM Seminar Series - December 2024 Seminar Series Presenter When mould is a museum visitor – xerophilic fungal growth challenges environmental recommendations for heritage collections In the last decade, extensive fungal growth has developed in Danish museums parallel to climate change challenging occupational health and heritage preservation. The growth was unexpected as the museums controlled relative humidity below 60 %, according to international environmental recommendations for heritage collections. Only heritage artefacts were affected, there was no growth on building constructions, interior and museum boxes. A cross-sectional study using a multiple detection approach found that the culprits were extremophilic xerophilic fungal species able to grow at low relative humidity, which is most unusual for fungi. The study concluded that xerophilic fungal growth is nationally distributed and suggests these species as a novel contaminant in climate-controlled museum repositories. To safeguard occupational health and heritage preservation research in sustainable solutions, avoiding xerophilic growth in museum collections is most important. Explore PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

ca95c5cd-a176-4d12-a128-324656894eec Catherine Stephens Sally and Michael Gordon Conservation Scientist Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York, NY, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Catherine H. Stephens, Ph.D., is the Sally and Michael Gordon Conservation Scientist at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, USA. Her work is focused on using analytical instrumentation, including mapping and handheld XRF, FTIR, SPME- and py- GCMS, MFT, and optical microscopy to inform conservation treatments, identify the composition of specific objects, study the environment around the art, and provide guidance for how to display and store MoMA’s collection. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2023 Participant Art Bio Matters 2023 Conference Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

a07348cf-9e38-46b3-98da-d12c0e67b40f Tami Lasseter Clare Associate Professor Portland State University Portland, OR, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Tami Lasseter Clare is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Portland State University where she teaches a range of undergraduate and graduate courses and is the Director of the Pacific Northwest Conservation Science Consortium, in partnership with five major museums in the region. With her undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral trainees, her research efforts center on developing new materials and diagnostic tools to prevent and understand the degradation of material cultural heritage, such as artwork and ethnographic materials. Her prior work experience includes post-doctoral work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and as an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Historic Preservation program. She earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2005. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2021 Team Presenter The Chilkat Dye Project Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

6061b438-48ab-4fb5-8fd2-aa8b4ec6e2ce Ilaria Serafini Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Research fellow Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian Institution Maryland, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Dr. Ilaria Serafini received her Ph.D. from Sapienza University of Rome with a thesis on the development of nanomaterials and new methodologies for the analysis of organic matrices in textiles, with a multi-technique approach. In her post doc also at Sapienza University, in the Analytical Chemistry group of Chemistry Department, worked on the development of analytical methods in LC-MS for the identification of diagnostic markers in complex natural matrices applied to the field of cultural heritage. Dr. Serafini is also the inventor of two patents, one in the field of cultural heritage, and is also the founder of the start-up Sapienza D-ART srl. In 2020, she was the winner of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship call, with a project on the development of new methodologies in the field of proteomics and dye analysis in extremely degraded archaeological artifacts, which took her for the last two years to the proteomics laboratory of the Museum Conservation Institute, Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Ending the outgoing phase of the project in February 2024, Dr. Serafini took up her position as a Researcher Tenure track in the Department of Environmental Biology- Sapienza University in April 2024 and is working toward the conclusion of the Marie Curie project (January 2025). ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2023 Poster Presenter Dyes and proteins analysis in a unique workflow: a new methodology for archaeological textiles Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS ABM Member Conversations - October 2024 Member Conversations Host Investigating Ancient Textiles - Where do you even start? How do you start investigating ancient textiles, when you are not even sure where to start? What kind of materials are they made from? Is there any information in those materials that would help identify a geographic place or date for the origin of the materials (if not the textiles themselves)? If the material is dyed--and many textile fragments are multi-colored--how could we test the dye? And, again, could the dye analysis give us any clues as to geography and chronology? Are there any tests or analytical procedures that can shed any light on the weaving or making process? If possible tests or procedures are known, how does one set up such tests? What is needed? Is sampling necessary? If so, what size would the samples need to be? What are the costs involved? Juliet and Ilaria will be holding an informal conversation touching on various topics of interest to both curators and scientists investigating ancient textiles. Explore PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

3ff9369e-8dca-40ad-a496-5b873c64bab5 Manu Frederickx Associate Conservator Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, NY, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Manu Frederickx is an Associate Conservator at The Met’s Objects Conservation Department, where he is responsible for the conservation and technical study of musical instruments. Previously he was a lecturer and head of the Musical Instrument Making program at University College Ghent and worked as a conservator at the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels. He is currently conducting a PhD study at Ghent University, focusing on the construction of virginals in 16th- and 17th-century Antwerp. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2021 Participant Art Bio Matters 2021 Virtual Conference Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

33ab88e7-e25c-4038-9067-f77d2a35a7ac Ophélie Ranquet PhD Student Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics Applied Mechanics Group Karlsruhe, Germany Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Ophélie Ranquet is a PhD Student at the KIT in Germany, at the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics. She completed her studies in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in France at the ENSCL (École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille) and at the ECPM (University of Strasbourg). Her PhD project, focused on a multi-analytical approach, is held in collaboration with Ilaria Bonaduce and Celia Duce (University of Pisa), Norbert Willenbacher (KIT) and Patrick Dietemann (Doerner Institute). She investigates the role of addition of egg yolk in linseed oil-based paints and tempera paints by using tools and technologies from different fields: rheology, physical and analytical chemistry. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2021 Team Presenter From egg tempera to oil painting – case studies of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli and the chemistry and microstructure of paints Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS

a6cdf1a9-9a1b-4463-9c75-d0bfbc4e52b0 Aleksandra Popowich Research Associate Department of Scientific Research The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, NY, USA Previous Next All members MEMBER INFORMATION Aleks Popowich has been at The Met since 2020 where she studies the many uses of proteins and lipids in works of art using mass spectrometry. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. She holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Alberta, where she studied the interactions of carcinogenic arsenic compounds with proteins using mass spectrometry and immunoassays. ABM CONFERENCES ABM 2023 Team Presenter Identifying trace amounts of brain-tissue-specific proteins in emulsion cured animal skins Co-authored with Christine Giuntini. Read the Abstract. Explore Full Abstract ABM 2021 Team Presenter A Tripartite Approach to Biomolecule Analysis for the Identification of Chia Oil in Paintings and Lacquerware from New Spain (Mexico) Explore Full Abstract ABM 2021 Coordinator Art Bio Matters 2021 Virtual Conference Explore Full Abstract ABM MEMBER EVENTS PUBLICATIONS + PROJECTS Catherine Gilbert, Vaclav Krupicka, Francesca Galluzi, Aleksandra Popowich, Stéphane Claverol, Julie Arslanoglu, Caroline Tokarski Species identification of ivory and bone museum objects using minimally invasive proteomics Ivory is a highly prized material in many cultures since it can be carved into intricate designs and have a highly polished surface. Due to its popularity, the animals from which ivory can be sourced are under threat of extinction. Identification of ivory species is not only important for CITES compliance, it can also provide information about the context in which a work was created. Here, we have developed a minimally invasive workflow to remove minimal amounts of material from precious objects and, using high-resolution mass spectrometry–based proteomics, identified the taxonomy of ivory and bone objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art collection dating from as early as 4000 B.C. We built a proteomic database of underrepresented species based on exemplars from the American Museum of Natural History, and proposed alternative data analysis workflows for samples containing inconsistently preserved organic material. This application demonstrates extensive ivory species identification using proteomics to unlock sequence uncertainties, e.g., Leu/Ile discrimination. Explore