​Susan L. Buck is a conservator in private practice specializing in the analysis and conservation of painted surfaces on wooden objects and architectural materials. She has a BA with concentration in studio art from Williams College and an MBA from Boston University. Her dissertation study of the architectural paints at the Aiken-Rhett House in Charleston, SC was awarded the University of Delaware Wilbur Owen Sypherd Prize for the outstanding doctoral dissertation in the Humanities in 2003. After completing her MS from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, she worked for seven years at the SPNEA Conservation Center as a furniture conservator and microscopist before entering the University of Delaware Ph.D. Program in Art Conservation Research. She has taught cross-section microscopy analysis and alternative cleaning system methods in the WUDPAC program for 14 years and supervised graduate interns since 1995. She brings real-world projects into the classroom, including the analysis and conservation of traditional paints, lacquer and gilding in the 1771-76 Qianlong Garden complex for the World Monuments Fund in The Forbidden City in Beijing, early wallpapers and paints found trapped in the walls at Montpelier and Mount Vernon, painted furniture and architecture at Historic Deerfield, and original exterior paints from Colonial Williamsburg.  She also teaches optical microscopy techniques in a new graduate conservation program for furniture and architectural materials in Beijing co-sponsored by the World Monuments Fund, The Palace Museum and Tsinghua University.