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Summer 2025
National Gallery of Art
Supervised by Michelle Stein, Amy Hughes, and Michelle Facini

Michelle Stein is the Museum Technician in Paper Conservation at NGA
Amy Hughes is now the Head of Paper Conservation at the Library of Congress
Michelle Facini is a Senior Paper Conservator at NGA

Artists' Material Collection

The Artists' Material Collection was established in 1994 and contains artists' materials, technical information, and trade literature.  Researchers from around the world can contact NGA to learn more about what is housed in the collection or visit to take samples of the materials for their research.

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Part of the Artists' Material Collection.

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Ultramarine blue pigment.

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Paint drawdowns for paints in this collection.

Adding to the Collection

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A small donation in 2024 was waiting to be added to the collection database and then find a home in the collection.  The collection database had been created in FileMaker.  My job was to incorporate as much information about each item into FileMaker.

FileMaker collection database.

Photography

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Photography setup.

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Capture One, tethering program.

Once each item was in the database, I took images of every object from every angle.  I learned how to use a tethering program called Capture One, which connects the camera directly to the computer.  Once all of the images had been taken, they were processed in Photoshop.

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Paint Drawdowns

I created paint drawdowns for the nine different paints included in the donation.  This process was tricky because there were once instructions, but they had unfortunately been lost.  I reached out to previous interns to help figure out the process.  Then I created a new set of instructions, with images, for future interns to use.

Completed paint drawdowns.

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