Joy Gardiner has been a “Textilian” for most of her life, studying weaving and textile design and receiving her BFA from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia in 1977. She remained in Philadelphia and worked in various guises as a free-lance artist before pursuing a career in conservation. In 1988, she received her M.S. in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Art Conservation Program (WUDPAC), majoring in textile conservation. Gardiner had a nine-month NEA post-graduate Master Apprenticeship in Costume and Textile Conservation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Prior to returning to Winterthur in 1990, she was a conservator in private practice in the Delaware Valley area. Gardiner joined the staff at the Winterthur Museum as an assistant textile conservator and to teach in WUDPAC. Gardiner is an affiliated assistant professor in WUDPAC teaching textile conservation and has served in recent years as the co-chair of the admissions committee. With Winterthur, she subsequently held the positions of associate conservator, conservator, head of textile conservation, assistant director of conservation, interim director of conservation and since April 2016 has been the Charles F. Hummel Director of Conservation.

She has lectured and published on a variety of Textile Conservation topics.  Recent examples include: “Unwelcome Zephyrs: Air Circulation and Fabric on Display” (with Joelle Wickens), 10th NATCC preprints and “To Avoid Additional Piercings: The Mounting of a 1795 Sampler with Original Paper Backing”, Textile Specialty Group of AIC Postprints.

A professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), she served on the board of the Textile Specialty Group of the AIC as treasurer (1993-1994), vice-chair (1998-1999), chair (1999-2000), and in 2017 received The Textile Specialty Group Award.  From 2002 to 2017, Gardiner was on the Steering Committee/Board of the North American Textile Conservation Conference and was involved in the planning and running of biennial meetings held in the US, Canada, and Mexico attended by an international audience of textile conservators.