Jennifer C Beetem

Art Caregiving + Website Services

 Art Conservation | Jennifer C Beetem

Art Conservation

Experience at a glance:

  • Objects
  • Works on paper
  • Photographs
  • Textiles
  • Preventive conservation
  • Archaeological
  • Museum internships:
    • Seattle Art Museum
    • Toledo Museum of Art
    • National Museum of Mongolia
  • Alternate to multiple graduate programs in conservation:
    • Buffalo State College
    • UCLA/Getty
    • Queens University

Art conservation and I connected when I sought a career change to apply my existing art and tech skills to hands-on climate change adaptation work. I discovered a real talent for conservation work and am striving to attend a graduate program in the future.

I am especially passionate about:

By continuing to train, I am working towards a level of practice where I can teach my skills and knowledge to others.

My experience spans many conservation work environments: private practice studios, labs in both well-funded and under-resourced institutions, on-site indoor and outdoor sculpture maintenance, clients’ homes, activist sites, and archaeological fieldwork.

Current Art Conservation CV (September 2023)

(This portfolio section is scheduled for updates)

Photograph of a woman with short purple hair wearing a black t-shirt and blue nitrile gloves and working on a long oak panel with moulding and decorative carving. She is using a thin metal tool to shape epoxy putty to resemble lost material. Photograph of a woman with dark hair and a black sweater with sleeves rolled up working at a workbench. She is working with a heated tacking iron and the back of a mounted photograph. She is using a heated metal spatula to release old adhesives on the back of the photograph.

Art conservation pre-program intern progress (as of 2021)

  • Paper and photograph conservation intern (paid), private conservator in Seattle, WA, USA. January 2018 - present
    • condition reports
    • surface cleaning
    • paper mends with dry and dispersion adhesives
    • photograph repairs
    • in-painting areas of loss
    • decorative frame fills
    • water damage survey
    • wet treatment assistance
    • enclosures
    • research
  • Objects conservation intern (paid), private conservator in Seattle, WA, USA. April 2019 - present
    • outdoor sculpture conservation
    • preventive conservation
    • cleaning
    • consolidation, mends, fills
    • in-painting fills & areas of loss
    • coatings
    • metals, wood, ceramic, fiberglass, composite objects
    • digital photographic documentation
  • Architectural conservation intern, Heritage Conservation Group, project in Seattle, WA, USA. Dec 2020 - Feb 2021
    • graffiti remediation
    • cleaning, coating removal
    • granite, exposed aggregate concrete
    • environment protection
  • Conservation intern (paid), Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH, USA. June - August 2020
    • condition reports
    • digital photographic documentation
    • outdoor sculpture maintenance
    • objects, textiles indoor projects
    • art handling
    • incident response
    • IPM
    • gel treatments of metal and textiles
    • housings
    • research, TMS

Photograph of a woman in a black sherpa-style hat with a white tassel and black coat sitting beside a table stacked with long narrow plastic trays. On the latticed ger wall hang various items. Photograph of a woman with her hair tied back in a black handkerchief and wearing a striped long sleeved shirt and blue nitrile gloves. She is holding an air puffer as she works on an archaeological textile fragment. Nearby on the workbench are forceps, microsnips,a bamboo skewer and notebook. In the background are various small and large crates and the ger door. Artifacts are pixellated.

  • Conservation field lab with textile and objects conservators, Nomad Science Mongolia field school. June-July 2019
    • salvage archaeology (Medieval looted sites)
    • field lab setup
    • artifact management
    • stabilizing metal, wood, leather, bark, textiles
    • field cleaning objects
    • field cleaning and flattening textile fragments
    • collaborated on field experiment
    • enclosures:
      • modular Coroplast trays
      • custom Coroplast boxes
      • recessed housings
      • foam sleeves
      • soft housings
    • training and supervising students: artifact management, tablet-based artifact registration workflow
    • community mentorship: archaeology, bioarchaeology, cultural anthropology, conservation, fine arts, culinary arts, auto mechanics
  • Paper conservation intern, National Museum of Mongolia. June 2019
    • condition reports
    • surface cleaning
  • Participant, Nomad Science Mongolia field school. July 2018
    • archaeological survey and excavations (early settlement sites)
    • salvage archaeology (Medieval looted sites)
    • field cleaning artifacts
    • cataloging lithic and ceramic artifacts
    • drone surveys
    • photogrammetry
    • community mentorship: archaeology, geography, history, geology, political science, culinary arts
  • Objects conservation intern, National Museum of Mongolia. August 2018
    • cleaning plastic
    • assistance cleaning and repairing large composite object