Photograph Conservation

The Met employed its first Photograph Conservator, Nora Kennedy, in 1990 to care for, document, and research the Museum’s photographic collections, initially within the Department of Paper Conservation and later in the curatorial Department of Photographs. In recognition of the importance of this distinct area of expertise, and the conservation specialty’s international reputation for excellence, Photograph Conservation was established as an independent Museum Department in 2015. Over the years, the Department grew from a single part-time conservator to a team of three photograph conservators, a book conservator focused on albums and photographically illustrated books, an administrator, and an endowed Research Scholar, all working in a dedicated, state-of-the-art lab.

For a number of decades, photograph conservators led the Museum-wide effort to establish a time-based media art conservation program at The Met. A collection-wide assessment and survey was carried out in 2016–18 by outside consultant Glenn Wharton, assisted by a graduate from New York University’s Moving Image Archiving Preservation Program, and a student from the Institute of Fine Arts’ Conservation Center. In 2019, The Met hired its first conservator of time-based media, Jonathan Farbowitz.

In 2025, the Department celebrates its ten-year anniversary and The Met’s leadership has approved the renaming of the Department to formally encompass these two ground-breaking conservation specializations. Today, the Department of Photograph and Time-Based Media Conservation includes three photograph conservators, two time-based media conservators, one contemporary art conservator focusing on both mediums, an administrator, and two fellows - one in time-based media and a Research Scholar in Photograph Conservation.

The Department partners closely with many curatorial departments, including Photographs and Modern and Contemporary Art. We also collaborate regularly with colleagues in Scientific Research, Registrar, Digital, Imaging, Design, Archives, Thomas J. Library, Engineering, and Technology, as well as with other conservators across the Museum.

Our state-of-the-art conservation lab has the facilities and equipment essential to study, document, and conserve the Museum’s photographic and time-based media (TBM) collections, from daguerreotypes to photograph albums to born-digital video art. A separate lab dedicated to TBM art conservation is close by, hosted within the Imaging Department. Through visual examination and non-destructive materials analysis, often undertaken in collaboration with the Department of Scientific Research, Photograph Conservation brings to light information about artists' techniques and the history of the medium, and helps inform preventive conservation policies for exhibition, loan, and storage.

Our facilities include conservation treatment and examination spaces; a digital documentation set-up; a darkroom equipped to recreate historic processes, enabling conservators and students to gain a detailed technical understanding of older works in the collection; office spaces; a seminar room with a technical library; and an extensive Study Collection.

Our analytical equipment includes a spectrophotometer, microfading tester; gloss meter; digital micrometer; a standardized raking-light digital microscope or "texturescope"; a Zeiss Axiocam imaging microscope; two folding endurance testers; binocular microscopes; a multispectral imaging setup with full-spectrum visible, UV, and IR illumination; and Elsec, Onset, and Vaisala climate monitoring devices.

Additional methods of analysis such as X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF), Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR/ATR-FTIR), and Raman Spectroscopy, among others, are carried out in collaboration with the Department of Scientific Research. Visit their equipment page for more information about scientific equipment available in the Museum.