Student Blog: Philadelphia Museum of Art

​For my third year internships, I chose to split my time between two institutions. This summer I commuted from Wilmington up the road to Philadelphia to start my first placement at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) in the Furniture and Woodwork Conservation Lab under the supervision of Behrooz Salimnejad and Peggy Olley.

​One of my goals for this year was to become more familiar with different decorative surfaces of wooden artifacts and architecture from a variety of cultures. This includes how to research and treat the objects based on the methods and materials used to create them, their condition, and the input of stakeholders across an institution. The internationally renowned encyclopedic collection of the PMA is ripe with opportunities to fulfill this goal. In addition to the wide range of furniture in the collection, the Furniture & Woodwork Conservators are responsible for caring for many of the period rooms and two of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Houses that the PMA oversees. This year I am charged with the research and care of a range of objects that fall into categories of decorative arts, architectural woodwork, and fine arts. I'm most excited to treat an 18^th-century gilded lectern from Italy, an 18^th-19^th century lacquered couch bed (Luohanchuang) from China, and research an 18^th-century painted period room from England. 

Another goal of mine was to be exposed to materials and treatment techniques I haven't explored yet. One of my first projects this summer was treating a 17^th-century Spanish armchair with leather upholstery, some of which had significant areas of loss to the leather. For this treatment I was able to use a technique I learned in a seminar at WUDPAC of casting a composite acrylic fill to create a custom material that can look convincingly like leather. The treatment was successful, and the chair is now back on view in the galleries. The PMA has also offered numerous opportunities to learn about holistic collections care in a large institutional setting by assisting with integrated pest management in the galleries, aiding with maintenance of the two Park Houses, and completing routine cleaning for objects on view and in storage. 

At the start of the new year,​ I'll be relocating to Cleveland to work in the Objects Conservation Lab at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). I am excited to work with Beth Edelstein and Colleen Snyder to continue my work with decorated surfaces of decorative art, fine art, and architectural woodwork in the second half of my internship year.

—Caroline Shaver, WUDPAC Class of 2024​