2022 INCCA/CAN! Virtual Speed Mentoring - Session 2

Abigail Mack holds a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters Degree in Art Conservation from the State University College of New York at Buffalo. Half of her professional career has been as a conservator in museums, notably the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, and the other half in private practice. The main thrust of her work is modern and contemporary artworks with specific experience and research on painted outdoor sculpture. She also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Calder Foundation, is an Advisor to the Louise Nevelson Foundation, is a consulting conservator for the Tony Smith Estate, and Morgan Art Foundation for Robert Indiana. Ms. Mack is also part owner of Monumenta Art Conservation & Finishing, LLC which focuses on the conservation and maintenance of large-scale and monumental artworks. Language Spoken: English.

Anna Laganà is a Senior Research Specialist at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), where she leads research projects and develops workshops on conservation treatments for plastics in collections. She graduated from the Istituto Conservazione per il Restauro's conservation program in Rome. Before joining the GCI, Anna managed her own company and worked with a number of larger institutions as coordinator of the Contemporary Art Conservation Laboratory at the Centro Conservazione Restauro la Venaria Reale in Turin, as a conservator/ researcher at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands conducting research on plastics, and as a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam coordinating the Postgraduate program in the Conservation of Modern and Contemporary Art. She is currently coordinator for the Modern Materials and Contemporary Art Working Group of ICOM-CC. Languages Spoken: English and Italian.

Carien is an independent conservator specialized in modern and contemporary art in both the Netherlands and United Kingdom and has a studio in London. She also serves as project conservator in the sculpture and installation department for the International Loans Program at Tate. She received her postgraduate training in conservation at the University of Amsterdam and holds an MSc in Chemistry. Her research focuses on the identification of plastics used in artworks. In her work as a conservation researcher at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum she developed a method for identifying plastics in museum collections without the use of analytical techniques. She carried this research over into her role as researcher on ‘Project Plastic’ to develop the Plastic Identification Tool and Plastic Identification Workshops. Currently she is involved with the follow-up project "Smelly Plastics." Languages Spoken: English and Dutch.

Francesca Esmay is the Guggenheim’s Director of Engagement, Conservation and Collections Care. In this role, she collaborates with other museum staff to explore connections between art, science, and technology, and engages the public to highlight the Guggenheim’s efforts to preserve contemporary culture.  She previously led the Guggenheim’s Panza Collection Initiative, a multi-year, interdisciplinary study into the care and status of a significant holding of Minimal and Conceptual art in the museum’s collection.  Prior to joining the Guggenheim, Esmay established inaugural conservation programs at both the Dia Art Foundation in New York and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, TX. Languages Spoken: English.

Gwynne Ryan has been active in the field of contemporary art conservation for the past 25 years. Currently working as an independent contractor, she was the Chief Conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden from 2009-2019 where she participated in the development of the museum’s artist interview program and the Smithsonian’s pan-institutional Time-Based Media Art working group. She was a founding member of Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA, previously INCCA-NA) in 2008 and has served alternately on the Board and the Program Committee over the past 14 years. She co-lead the VoCA Artist Interview Workshops from 2014-2018 and is currently exploring the intersection between the conservator’s practice and the artist’s creative process. Languages Spoken: English.

Humberto Farias has been a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro since 2012. He interned at the Conservation Laboratory of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in 2014 and participated in the visiting scholar program, The Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program, at New York University in 2016. He was an adjunct researcher in a project funded by the Getty Foundation in 2016 to 2018. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis at the Universitat Politècnica de València under the direction of Dr. Salvador Muñoz Viñas. Languages Spoken: Portuguese and Spanish preferred, English.

Art historian and conservator, Dr. Irene Esteves-Amador is a pioneer in the conservation through documentation practice in the Caribbean, and author to the book Myrna Báez: the Artist and her Voice. The Preservation of Contemporary Art through the Artist Interview. She is Ana G. Méndez University Museum director and Fundación Ángel Ramos Art Gallery Coordinator. Founding Director of the Latin American Artists Documentation Project, she was also the Menil Collection and Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artists Documentation Program Fellow. She has documented trascendental artists such as Daniel Lind-Ramos, and most recently Wilfredo Chiesa thanks to Voices of Contemporary Art. Languages Spoken: Spanish and English.

In 2022, Shu-Wen Lin joins the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as Associate Media Conservator. She received her MA from the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at New York University in 2016. Prior to and following NYU, she gained experience while working at a number of institutions including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Library of Medicine (NIH), M+ Museum for Visual Culture, MoMA (New York), the Stanford University Libraries, the New York Public Library, Sterling Ruby Studio, Cai Guo-Qiang Studio, and Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. Languages Spoken: English and Mandarin.

Stephanie is originally from Denver, Colorado where she received a BFA in pre-art conservation from the University of Denver. In 2018 she graduated from the Buffalo State Garman Art Conservation Department specializing in objects conservation. She has worked in a variety of institutions from museums to private practices, regional centers and the National Park Service. While she has a focus in archeological and cultural heritage collections with a particular interest in Native American objects she is a generalist with experience in a bit of everything from fine and contemporary art to natural history specimen and monumental sculpture. Currently, Stephanie is the Associate Conservator of Objects at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Language Spoken: English.

Suzanne Siano is the founder and chief conservator of Modern Art Conservation, a large private studio in New York focusing on expert conservation of modern and contemporary paintings and mixed media works. Suzanne trained at the Institute of Fine Arts Conservation Center before working as a conservator at MoMA for over a decade. She is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, training future conservators in the specialized area of modern and contemporary paintings conservation and lectures widely on a variety of topics to raise awareness of the role of the conservator in the art world. Language Spoken: English.