The following two articles were originally featured in the Spring 2026 issue of the NOMA Magazine. If you’re interested in receiving future issues of the NOMA Magazine—including the upcoming Fall 2026 issue—become a member today.
Conservation at NOMA: Enhancing Care for Our Collection
by Ingrid Seyb, Conservator of Objects
Photo by Casey Dawson
Museums serve many roles–to educate, to share stories, and to inspire, among them. But one of the most crucial roles museums serve is to preserve works in their care. Of all the things in the world created by human minds and hands, museums choose just a few to hold, display, and preserve for years to come. In many ways, creating a permanent collection is an act of preservation because of the safe house that museums provide for artistic works: by defining some objects as particularly worthy of preservation, museum collections shape our understanding of humanity and the many cultures and histories that make up our world.
Everyone at NOMA is involved in preservation activities to some degree. While the preparators install, pack, and frame the art, the facilities team maintains the building’s internal and external structures to protect the art from leaks, pests, and humidity. Gallery attendants ask visitors not to touch works on view, and the private events team explains to third-party contractors why red wine cannot be served at weddings hosted in the museum. We share the common goal of preserving art for future generations–and conservators support these intersecting efforts by connecting everyday work practices to up-to-date research, ensuring all teams can provide the best care possible with their available resources.
Nayla Maaruf and I are the first full-time conservators hired to NOMA’s staff. Many conservators in private practice have performed invaluable assessments and treatments to the collection over the museum’s history, especially in the immediate post-Katrina years. But as full-time staff conservators, we gain intimate knowledge of NOMA’s collection over time, allowing us to provide more consistent support to our colleagues.
The umbrella of our conservation work includes many different tasks. Conservation might mean repairing a work that was broken centuries ago, or simply slowing down ongoing deterioration that is inherent to a work’s material. It might also include removing past interventions or restorations, or (in some cases) redoing them. Ultimately, the goal of our work is to champion the maker’s vision while increasing an object’s longevity, enhancing access to the work through its display, and facilitating its legibility to viewers. When NOMA’s conservators remove tarnish from a silver vessel, mend a tear in a drawing, or renew the protective wax on an outdoor bronze, we honor visitors both past and present, our colleagues, the object’s makers, and everyone who has lovingly cared for these works before us.
NOMA’s permanent collection contains objects dating from antiquity to the present–a manifestation of the unique heritage of New Orleans and the particular development of the museum over 115 years. The wide range of materials and styles among these works make for an enjoyably varied conservation workflow filled with ongoing learning. The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, home to 99 of NOMA’s 102 outdoor sculptures and host to a wide variety of programmatic offerings, presents one of the biggest conservation challenges in the collection. Exposure to the elements causes the sculptures’ condition to change much faster than they would indoors, but constant, proactive maintenance treatments are invaluable. Responsible stewardship of NOMA’s collection, inside as well as out, is essential to its longevity.
To strengthen and expand NOMA’s conservation efforts, work is underway to build new conservation labs, which will be the largest and most comprehensive facilities of their type between Houston and Atlanta. The labs will create opportunities to collaborate with New Orleans university programs to launch local students into conservation careers. Ultimately, this conservation project will strengthen NOMA’s ability to care for our collection and make works accessible for future generations of visitors and scholars. By starting an in-house conservation program, NOMA is investing in its collection, its staff, and its future self-reliance.
Meet the Conservators: Ingrid Seyb and Nayla Maaruf
Editor’s note: Ingrid Seyb’s responses are marked as “IS” and Nayla Maaruf’s responses are marked as “NM.”
How did you become interested in conservation as a career?
NM: I fell in love with the profession the day I learned it was something I could pursue as a career. During a visit to the Museum of Fine Art in Ghent during high school, we passed a room where they were restoring the Adoration of the Mystic Lam [the Ghent Altarpiece] by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The room had glass walls so the public could follow the process. It was full of microscopes and people hung over the painting with optical visors on their heads, working away with tiny brushes and cotton swabs. Our museum guide mentioned in passing you could study at the university to become a conservator, and that was it for me. I found my calling.
IS: After college, I spent over a year with a Classic Maya archaeological project. I loved working with the finds, but seeing the enormous volume of artifacts that is the product of excavations there—far more stuff than the Guatemalan government can realistically care for—turned me away from archaeology and towards conservation. Also, I watched a lot of episodes of Lovejoy [a British television series about an expert antiques dealer] as a kid.
What is one project you are working on now at NOMA?
NM: We are currently preparing a Man Ray collage to go out on loan [to the Metropolitan Museum of Art]. Before it goes out, we are doing UV imaging to record and analyze its current condition. It also means constructing special framing for transportation and display while the work is outside of our institution.
IS: I am cleaning an 18th-century silver holy water font that has tarnished from years of display, in preparation for its reinstallation later this year. To prevent it turning black again, I will coat it with a varnish to protect it from sulphur in the air.
What is something about your role that you think readers would be surprised by?
NM: We are lucky we get to see any hidden features, read notes and signatures on the back, and observe a work’s history. For example, when I was reviewing an ambrotype with a microscope, I found one of the people in the picture with their fly open. It’s finds like these that make me laugh and love my job.
IS: Conservation can mean a variety of tasks other than treatments. For example, I made several of the mannequins used in [the exhibition] New African Masquerades: Artistic Innovations and Collaborations using aluminum, foam, polyester batting, cotton jersey, and cast epoxy resin for the hands and feet.