Webinar Speakers
sasha arden
Time-based media Conservator
New York
sasha arden was the Rachel and Jonathan Wilf & Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-Based Media Conservation since 2018 and graduated in 2022 from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU with an MA in the History of Art and Archaeology and an MS in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. Having been involved in arts production, installation, and management throughout their career, sasha embraces the long-term thinking and development of appropriate stewardship practices in conservation while being informed by practical experience. Their ongoing work examines the intersection of technical capabilities and the philosophical and ethical questions arising through the conservation process, advocating for a holistic approach to the integrity of cultural assets.
Reinhard Bek
Partner
Bek&Frohnert LLC, New York
Prior to enrolling in the Conservation Program of the HTW, University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Reinhard apprenticed as a Ship-Builder in Hamburg (1993 to 1996), and completed internships in the Conservation Departments of several museums in Germany. He was a Fellow at the Swiss Institute of Art Research (SIK), Zurich, Switzerland, in 2001, and completed his training as an Objects Conservator in 2002. He holds a graduate degree in the Conservation of Objects. Reinhard joined the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland from 2002 to 2012 as Head of Conservation. Reinhard was a participant of the European Conservation Research Projects Inside Installations and PRACTIC’S, 2003-2010. In 2009, he was a twelve-month Conservation Research Fellow with The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Since 2012, Reinhard is Partner of bek&frohnert LLC, based in New York City.
Dr. Carolin Bohlmann
Chair of the Institute Conservation and Restoration
The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Specialisation Contemporary Art Conservation
Carolin Bohlmann was involved as conservator at documenta 10, and held positions at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, and at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin. Her research is focused on the intersection of art history and conservation including the materiality in modern and contemporary art and media and the conservation of contemporary and ephemeral art. Together with Angela Matyssek, she organized the Symposium on Ephemeral, Process Art and the Museum at Hamburger Bahnhof in 2016. With a fellowship in 2019 she joined the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) of the Bauhaus Universität Weimar with a research project on questioning material and immateriality with focus on conservation treatment/aspects of certificate-based conceptual art works. Currently she is involved with her colleague Almut Schilling in a project concerned with interdisciplinary approaches on the process of reproducing, copying, and repeating in contemporary art, provided as an ongoing lecture series titled BEST AVAILABLE COPY.
Amy Brost
Assistant Media Conservator
The David Booth Conservation Department, The Museum of Modern Art
Amy Brost is Assistant Media Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. She works with the Media and Performance collection as well as with the museum's digital repository for art. She earned undergraduate degrees in art, art history and chemistry, and completed her M.A. in art history and M.S. in conservation at New York University in 2016. During her conservation training she worked with time-based media collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has been an adjunct instructor in NYU's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation graduate program and has taught in several workshops on the care of media art.
Caroline Carlsmith
Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-based Media Art
Conservation at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Caroline Carlsmith received a Studio Art BFA and Visual Critical Studies BA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and an Art Theory and Practice MFA from Northwestern University in 2014. She has exhibited her artwork nationally and internationally, and has received support for her art and research practices from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, among others. Previous residencies include the Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, SÍM Reykjavik, Residency 108, and SOMA Mexico City. Carlsmith was a founding creative board member of the interdisciplinary residency Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange, and was a 2019 BRIC Media Arts Fellow. She has served as head archivist for Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, collections manager for private collections, and development officer for Judd Foundation in New York City and Marfa, Texas.
Dr. Brian Castriota
Time-Based Media Conservator, National Galleries of Scotland
Brian Castriota is a Glasgow-based researcher, educator, and conservator specialised in time-based media, contemporary art, and archaeological materials. He completed graduate-level training in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2014) and received a PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow (2019). He currently holds the position of Time-Based Media Conservator at the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh) and is a freelance conservator for time-based media and contemporary art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) and the National Portrait Gallery (London). He also serves as Supervising Conservator with Harvard Art Museums’ Archaeological Exploration of Sardis in Turkey and has worked with the expedition since 2011. He is an adjunct lecturer in time-based media art conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and is a tutor and regular guest lecturer on the subject of contemporary art conservation theory and practice at the University of Glasgow.
Deena Engel
Clinical Professor Emerita of the Department of Computer Science
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University
Deena Engel focuses her research on contemporary art. The winner of four teaching awards, she has experience teaching undergraduate computer science courses on web and database technologies, as well as Digital Humanities courses for graduate students. Deena is the Co-Director along with Prof. Glenn Wharton of the Artist Archives Initiative; she also works with major museums on projects which address the challenges involved in the conservation of time-based media art. She has an M.A. from SUNY-Binghamton in Comparative Literature and Literary Translation and an M.S. in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
Briana Feston-Brunet
Time-based and Variable Media Conservator
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
Since joining the department in 2015, Briana’s work has focused on the conservation of large-scale media installations, performance art, and computer-based contemporary artworks. She manages the Hirshhorn’s Artist Interview Program and serves as the museum’s representative in the SI wide TBMA group and NFT Working Group. Prior to joining the Hirshhorn, she held graduate fellowships and positions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Sèvres-Cité de la Céramique, in Sèvres, France. Briana earned her AB in French Literature and Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College, and her MA in art history and a certificate in conservation at New York University, with a focus in modern and contemporary art.
Erin Fitterer
Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-based Art Media Conservation
Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Erin Fitterer has completed her third-year graduate studies at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, specializing in objects and time-based media. She received her BA in history and English from Seattle University and an MA in art history from Rutgers University. This summer, she will be working as a student conservator for New York University's excavation in Selinunte, Italy. She will also be working on a number of projects for Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI). Erin is looking forward to this fall when she begins her 12-month Capstone Internship at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
Scott Fitzgerald
Industry Associate Professor, Co-Director of Integrated Design & Media, Global Network Arts Professor
Tandon School of Engineering, New York University
Scott Fitzgerald is an artist and educator whose work examines the interdependence of culture and emerging technology. His installation, video, and experiential work has been exhibited and installed throughout the USA, Europe, Middle East, and China. He regularly runs workshops on using technology in the arts and was the head of documentation for the open source Arduino platform. He is a partner in Lightband Studio.
Christine Frohnert
Partner
Bek&Frohnert LLC
Research Scholar and Program Coordinator
Conservation at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
(Graduate degree 2003, Conservation of Modern Materials and Media, University of Arts, Berne, Switzerland) is a partner of Bek & Frohnert LLC, Conservation of Contemporary Art, based in New York City since 2012. Previously, Ms. Frohnert served for twelve years as a conservator of contemporary art and later as chief conservator at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany. She was Chair of the Electronic Media Group from 2008 to 2012 and initiated the conference series TechFocus. Ms. Frohnert was named the inaugural Judith Praska Distinguished Visiting Professor in Conservation and Technical Studies at the Center in 2012. Since then, as an Institute Lecturer, she has offered instruction in time-based media art, including the course Art with A Plug: The Conservation of Artwork Containing Motion, Sound, Light, Moving Images and Interactivity as well as Topics in Time-Based Media Art Conservation and Technology and Structure of Works of Art: Time-based Media. Christine Frohnert is currently Research Scholar and Program Coordinator for the TBM initiative at the Center.
Martina Haidvogl
Lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art
Bern Academy of the Arts
Prior to her appointment as a lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art at the Bern Academy of the Art, Martina Haidvogl was Associate Media Conservator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2011-2019), where she has piloted documentation and preservation initiatives for SFMOMA’s Media Arts collection. Martina has lectured and published internationally on media conservation and its implementation within collecting institutions and has most recently organized the conferences TechFocus IV: Caring for 3D-printed Art and Contemporary Art Conservation Revisited: 20 Years Later. Her research focuses on cross-disciplinary collaboration practice fostered through digital tools, serving the needs of the art of our time.
Taylor Healy
Smithsonian Postgraduate Fellow in the Conservation of Museum Collections
Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC
Taylor Healy graduated in 2021 from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU with an MA in the History of Art and Archaeology and an MS in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works specializing in time-based media art conservation. She is currently a post-graduate fellow at the Smithsonian focusing on artworks incorporating neon units. During the course of her studies, she has gained experience in objects conservation, textile conservation and time-based media conservation treatments. She has completed internships at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Scottish National Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, and American Museum of Natural History. Taylor received a BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015 and maintains a personal studio practice working with materials such as metals, glass, textiles and plastics.
James Hughes
Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-based Media Art
Conservation at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
James Hughes is a rising third-year student at the Conservation Center specializing in time-based media and objects conservation, with a focus on modern and contemporary sculpture and installations. Trained throughout his life as a studio artist, James studied industrial design and worked in the fields of product design and project management for nearly a decade before turning to the field of conservation. A lifelong enthusiasm for both art and technology, combined with a robust understanding of the design and production processes, has fueled his passion for documenting and treating complex artworks with varying components and nontraditional materials. He has conserved digital artworks like Amy Alexander's The Travesty Corporate PR InfoMixer!, and has treated works with physical components like John F. Simon, Jr.'s Color Panel v1.0. Through coursework and internships at The Museum of Modern Art and The Brooklyn Museum, James has gained a first-hand understanding of the value of conservation documentation of time-based media artworks and the nuanced ethical decisions required to treat each work on a case-by-case basis. Prior to joining the Conservation Center, James completed internships at The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, where he was directed by NYU alum Lisa Conte in the conservation of contemporary objects with complex histories, and The American Museum of Natural History, where he carefully documented the conservation of the White Rhinoceros diorama in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. During the summer 2022, he is working with contemporary sculpture at Art Conservation Group, a private conservation firm in Queens, and with a large, multi-component installation at The Guggenheim Museum.
Josephine Jenks
Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-based Media Art Conservation; Rachel and Jonathan Wilf Fellow in Time-based Media Art Conservation
Conservation at the Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, Josephine Jenks formed an early passion for art that endured through college at Wesleyan University. There, she majored in English and studio art, while also taking courses in art history and programming. She first learned about art conservation from a printmaking professor during her senior year. After graduating, paper conservation internships at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and the Frick Art Reference Library confirmed her captivation with the field. While taking chemistry courses at Hunter and Brooklyn College, she continued researching the profession, touring labs, and meeting with conservators. Through these conversations, she developed an interest in the emerging issue of preserving time-based art. She is thrilled to have the opportunity to pursue a graduate education in time-based media art conservation at the NYU Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center.
Lia Kramer
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Media Conservation
The David Booth Conservation Department, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Lia Kramer is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Media Conservation at MoMA, while completing the final year of her fellowship at Brooklyn Museum. She has previously worked in time-based media conservation for Tate, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Prior to specializing in time-based media, Lia also trained in object and painting conservation. Lia holds an M.A. in the History of Art and Archaeology and an M.S. in Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2019), and a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from Georgia State University (2010).
Lilia Kudelia
Independent Curator and Guest Curator of the Young Visual Artists Award program
Residency Unlimited, NY
Lilia Kudelia is a Guest Curator at Residency Unlimited, NY, where she develops residencies for the laureates of the Young Visual Artists Awards (YVAA), a network of twelve awards in the counties of Eastern, Central and Southern Europe. Kudelia has previously worked as the Assistant Curator at Dallas Contemporary in Dallas, Texas and held curatorial and research positions at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and the Art Arsenal in Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2017, Kudelia co-curated the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale that featured work by photographer Boris Mikhailov. She holds an MA in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, a BA in Cultural Studies from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine, and was a visiting scholar at the University of Toronto, Canada. She has served on many juries and committees including the Ardhje Award 2021, Milčik Award 2021, Bird in Flight international photography prize, and the Visualise program at Ukrainian Institute among others. Kudelia’s research interests include decolonization, cultural heritage and restitution; television and art from the 1960s onwards; artistic movements and infrastructures in the post-communist states.
Pip Laurenson
Professor of Conservation
University College London
Pip Laurenson is the newly appointed Professor of Conservation at UCL and Director of the MSc in the Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media at UCL East launching in September 2023. Pip has 30 years of experience in the conservation of contemporary art, establishing and leading Tate’s pioneering Time-based Media Conservation section from 1996 until 2010. Between 2010 and 2022 Pip was Head of Collection Care Research, working to develop, lead and support research related to the conservation and management of Tate's collections. In January 2016 Pip took up a special chair as Professor of Art Collection and Care at Maastricht University. Pip is committed to interdisciplinary research that serves and responds to art of our time and the major challenges facing the conservation of contemporary collections in the 21st Century. She has secured awards for research from a range of funders and from 2018-2022 she led the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Initiative Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum. She received her doctorate from University College London, is an accredited member of the Institute for Conservation and is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA).
Lisa Conte
Head of Conservation
9/11 Memorial and Museum, New York
Lisa Conte is currently the Head of Conservation at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, a position she has held since 2017. She will join the faculty at the Conservation Center as the Visiting Associate Professor of Paper Conservation in the 2022-23 academic year. Lisa specializes in the conservation of modern and contemporary works on paper, and has previously held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Scott Gerson Conservation, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She received her BA in English and Studio Art from William Smith College and an MA in Art History and an Advanced Certificate in Conservation from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts. Her recent research addresses themes of memory, history, and ethics particularly as related to the care of sacred objects and those associated with traumatic events.
Kate Lewis
Agnes Gund Chief Conservator
The David Booth Conservation Department, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Kate Lewis is a Media Conservator and the Agnes Gund Chief Conservator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has worked with artists including Beryl Korot, David Lamelas, Tony Oursler and Lis Rhodes. She earned her M.A. in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper from the University of Northumbria, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and B.A. in the History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Prior to joining MoMA she held the position of Time-based Media Conservator at Tate in London (2005-2013). She serves on the Board of Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA).
Ana Lizeth Mata Delgado
Professor, Seminario Taller de Restauración de Arte Moderno y Contemporáneo
Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía - Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México
Ana Lizeth Mata Delgado graduated in restoration from the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía (ENCRyM) - Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), with a Master in Art History, specializing in contemporary art from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Since 2007 she is Professor-Researcher, and Head of the Seminar on Restoration of Modern and Contemporary Art. Her research projects include "Documentation, diagnosis and conservation of urban art" and "Documentation, registration and material experimentation in modern and contemporary art". She coordinated the course on “New Approaches in the Conservation of Digital Art and New Media 2020/2022”. She is the author of several articles and papers focused on the conservation-restoration of modern and contemporary art, as well as graffiti and urban art. She is a member of the International Urban Art Group and the 20th Century Art Group, both integral to the Spanish Group of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC). She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (INCCA).
Diego Mellado Martinez
Studio Daniel Canogar
Spain - US
Diego Mellado Martinez is a Communications Engineer with a Master in MediaArtHistories from Danube University Krems (DUK). He has been working since 2010 on the design of new media artworks for various artists. In 2015 he started researching on media art conservation, with a strong focus on technical solutions and documentation models for software-based artworks. In 2020 he presented his master thesis on computer-based art conservation at DUK. He is currently Technical Director of the Daniel Canogar Studio (Spain and US) and collaborates with the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography (ENCRyM) in Mexico City in courses, workshops and trainings on media art conservation as instructor, while continuing to present his research in different talks, conferences and lectures.
Peter Oleksik
Media Conservator
The David Booth Conservation Department, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Peter Oleksik is the Media Conservator at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) where he has been working since 2011 to conserve the museum's vast time-based media collection. Outside of MoMA, Peter regularly writes and teaches various topics within time-based media conservation as well as works with artists, filmmakers and musicians to preserve and provide access to their media collections. Oleksik received his BA in Cinema Studies from the University of Southern California and his MA from New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program.
Felice Robles
Mellon Foundation Fellow in Time-based Art Media Conservation
Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Felice Graciela Robles is a rising fourth year art conservation student with a dual focus on time-based media and photograph conservation. She is currently a graduate intern in time-based media with the Art Institute of Chicago, and will be completing her fourth-year capstone internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She previously received her BA in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked as a gallery registrar before pursuing work in photograph conservation. Her research interests include the intersection of time-based works with photographic materials both printed and projected, as well as how philosophical frameworks utilized in time-based media conservation may be applied to contemporary photography.
Dr. Hannelore Roemich
Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Conservation
Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Dr. Hannelore Roemich (PhD in Chemistry from the University in Heidelberg, Germany) is teaching Material Science and Preventive Conservation at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts since 2007. Dr. Roemich served for sixteen years as a conservation scientist at the Fraunhofer-Institut für Silicatforschung (ISC) in Würzburg, Germany, where she conducted research on the deterioration and conservation of stained glass and outdoor bronze sculpture, as well as glass sensors for environmental monitoring, and lectured widely on her work. She served as Science Officer at COST in Brussels from 2004 to 2006. Dr. Roemich is currently the Principal Investigator of the Mellon funded TBM art conservation initiative at NYU.
Samantha Rowe
Digital Archivist and Research Associate
The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
Samantha Rowe is the Digital Archivist and Research Associate of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc. (WPI). She prepares, describes, arranges, and conducts item-level processing of digital archival materials using the WPI’s relational database to provide free public access to over 50,000 significant art historical resources and research materials on its growing digital platform. She earned her M.S.L.I.S. from Long Island University in 2019 and M.A. in History of Art from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2020. As of August 2021, she serves on the Programming Committee of the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc.
Dr. Sanneke Stigter
Assistant Professor Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, Specialization Contemporary Art Conservation
University of Amsterdam
Dr. Sanneke Stigter is trained as art historian and conservator, her focus is on conservation theory, history and ethics, museum practice, oral history and artist participation, focusing on conceptual art, photoworks and installation art. Before, she was heading the Conservation Department of Contemporary Art and Modern Sculpture at the Kröller-Müller Museum, and has been involved in many international research projects (e.g. Inside Installations, NeCCAR, NACCA). She is Principal Investigator of several research projects on oral history and reflexive practice in conservation, including OH-SMArt, developing a digital research infrastructure for the domain of the visual arts and cultural heritage in the Netherlands (2021-2024). She is KNAW-Comenius Fellow, IIC Fellow, PhD-supervisor, reviewer and editor, and has published >90 papers/chapters/books. She feels strongly about societal relevance, serves on the INCCA and the SBMK steering committees, and is founder of the national Alumni Network Conservation and Restoration and the Interviews in Conservation Initiative.
Jessica Walthew
Conservator
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
Jessica Walthew is a conservator at Cooper Hewitt, working with both the Product Design & Decorative Arts and Digital collections. Her current research focuses on modern and contemporary plastics, and on linking conservation theory and practice across traditional media and digital collecting. Recent publications include “Conservation in the Digital Age” (in Collecting in the Twenty-First Century: From Museums to the Web, Camden House, 2022), and “Conserving Active Matter in Contemporary Design” (coauthor with Sarah Barack, in Living Matter: The Preservation of Biological Materials in Contemporary Art, Getty, May 2022).