Category: Art Conservation
Student Blog: Bristol Museum and Gallery
December 01, 2025 Written by Taryn Monize
To round off my final year of training as a conservator of paintings I chose to complete my summer work project at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and subsequent 3rd year internship placement at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Given my interests in painted surfaces and scientific and technical analyses, I wanted to prioritize developing research skills and diversifying my portfolio of experience with non-traditional supports and technical analysis. The conservation team at the Bristol Museum and Gallery caters to the needs of the collections from the Blaise Museum, MShed, The Georgian House Museum, The Bristol Archives and The Red Lodge Museum in addition to the main gallery. The Cleveland Museum of Art boasts a similarly vast collection of paintings and objects as well as a dedicated analytical lab so I was confident that pursuing placements at these two institutions would surpass my learning goals.
My summer kicked off with a research opportunity that allowed me to connect with my own culture. The Bristol Museum has a small collection of Guyanese paintings and were interested in developing the artist’s file of Aubrey Williams. This presented the perfect opportunity to travel back to my home country of Guyana to consult with the curator of the National Art Gallery (Castellani House). The curator shared his knowledge of Williams working practices, the most common condition concerns and even brought several examples of the artist’s work for me to study before I travelled to England to study the Bristol Museum’s painting and its corresponding study in person. I continued to build on my knowledge on the treatment and care of modern and contemporary paintings this summer through my other major project which was to prepare two modern paintings by Jimoh Bolo Akolo for an upcoming loan. The paintings presented interesting challenges that exposed me to a variety of new inpainting techniques and structural treatments. They are currently on view at Tate Modern as part of the Nigerian Modernism exhibit.
My summer experiences included dedicated time to travel to important cultural heritage sites across England, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Italy. Spending time in these collections and with conservators from such a variety of institutions significantly contributed to my close looking skills, sense of context, philosophy and appreciation for a wide variety of paintings but also allowed me to prepare for my upcoming projects at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My major treatment projects for this year include a French/American Harbour Scene, an Italian Landscape and a 17th century Dutch panel painting. In addition to treatment, I am tasked with completing a full technical study of the Dutch panel by the artist, Roelant Savery. I feel extremely fortunate to have access to a rich array of analytical equipment at the CMA to pursue Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and Macro X-ray Fluorescence (Macro XRF) in my study of this painting and the CMA’s partnership with Case Western Reserve University also grants me access to instruments Scanning Electron Microscopy/ Electron Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) amongst others.
