Holly Salmon named Director of Conservation at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

​WUDPAC alumna Holly Salmon was recently named the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's John L. and Susan K. Gardner Director of Conservation. In this role, Salmon will oversee the department’s staff and activities, ensure best practices in the preservation of the collection, and enhance the visitor experience in the galleries. From a recent article in Art Daily:

Salmon began working at the Museum in 2004 as the Assistant Objects Conservator and was successively promoted until her most recent position as Senior Objects Conservator in 2016. In this latest role, she managed the conservation of sculpture, decorative arts and architectural objects in the Museum collection. She played a leading role in advancing the use of laser technology for cleaning works of art. She also oversaw the Museum’s conservation capital projects, such as the recent restoration of the Raphael Room gallery. Most recently, she and her colleagues completed a project to research and clean the Farnese Sarcophagus, a two-year long conservation process culminating in an exhibition where new scholarly and scientific discoveries around the sarcophagus’s original colorful appearance and previous restoration campaigns were presented.

A widely respected professional in the field, Salmon excels at bringing multi-faceted, interdepartmental projects to successful completion. In her new role, Salmon will oversee the Conservation Department’s staff and activities, and ensure best practices in the preservation of the collection while also enhancing the visitor experience in the galleries. Currently, the Museum's Conservation Department is involved in the first major restoration in over 90 years of one of the greatest masterpieces in the Gardner collection, Titian's Rape of Europa. The conserved painting is part of a larger project that will culminate in the full restoration of the Titian Room including lighting, wall upholstery and conservation of furniture, sculptural objects and paintings housed in the gallery.

Salmon holds a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in art history and studio art from Wellesley College, a master’s of science degree in art conservation from Winterthur/University of Delaware and a certificate of advanced training in Objects Conservation from the Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums. She has also completed internships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Harvard’s Peabody Museum, the National Conservation Centre in Liverpool, England and fellowships at Historic New England and as Henry Luce Foundation Scholar in Kyoto, Japan. She has lectured widely about her expertise and has contributed to various publications in the field. She lives in Arlington, MA.