About Me

Personal Biography

My work is a confluence of a lifetime of varied interests and skills. I learned how to sew as a young girl, taught by my mother who is herself a quilter and novice dressmaker. These sewing skills led to an early career as a seamstress in bridal alterations which honed my understanding of textile materials and garment construction. My father, an avid museum goer, also fostered an early love of historic objects and museums. This eventually led me to an undergraduate degree in Public History at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse with the intention of one day working directly with objects in museum collections. 

In 2017 I pursued a masters degree for textile conservation in FIT’s Fashion and Textile Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice program. While in the program I completed two conservation internships in New York, each of which allowed me to transition into contract positions in those same labs. In 2019 I became an Intermittent Conservator in Textiles at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum working primarily on exhibition driven conservation. For four years in that position, I assisted in the preparation and installation of textile objects in the Cooper Hewitt’s galleries.

In 2019 I was also hired as a part-time Collections Assistant in the Costumes and Textiles department at the Museum of the City of New York to assist the ongoing assessment of their 26,000-object collection. While working on that long-term project, my responsibilities also grew to include the planning, preparation, and installation of costumes and textiles for display, digitization, and loan. 

In early 2020, I began working part-time as a contract conservator in the conservation lab at the Museum at FIT, where I am now a full-time assistant conservator. In each of these roles I work primarily on exhibition-driven treatment, mounting, and installation of costume objects as well as ongoing collections care and preventive conservation initiatives. 

In the nine years that I’ve been working in conservation labs I’ve developed a keen interest in material science, and in the fall of 2021 I began teaching fiber and fabric identification and analysis in the Fashion and Textile Studies masters program at FIT. This teaching appointment offered me a valuable opportunity to dive deep into scientific, technical, and structural research that would otherwise not be possible in the exhibition-driven conservation positions that I have held. While I no longer teach that course, I continue to advise graduate student qualifying papers.

If you would like to read more about my early career path, in 2020 I published an article in the Fashion Studies Journal that outlines how I came to the field of conservation and how navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as an early-career professional has shaped the nature of my museum work.