‘There are secrets to unlock’

Cristina Morilla, associate paintings conservator, working in 2020 on a portrait of King Philip of Spain at Harvard Art Museums. In some cases, conservators are practitioners themselves, explains Brenda Bernier, the director of Preservation Services for Harvard Library. To understand how and why an object is falling apart, one has to know how it’s put together. “Each one is like a little puzzle.”

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Campus & Community
‘There are secrets to unlock’

Veasey Conway

Harvard Staff Photographer

May 20, 2025 7 min read

Harvard’s practice of preservation plays key role in future research

Across the University and the world, Harvard students, staff, and researchers dedicate themselves to documenting, organizing, and restoring items big and small. The tools of the trade could be trowels, tweezers, erasers, microscopes, or 3D scanners, but their goal is the same: to preserve works of literature, art, science, and civilization, and keep them accessible for future generations of researchers, students, and the wider public.

“There are secrets to unlock,” says Brenda Bernier, the Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian and director of Preservation Services for Harvard Library. “I find that the most exciting and exhilarating part of it, and also the most daunting.”

Bernier’s office is near the Weissman Preservation Center on Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square. “Anytime you walk through that lab, there’s something that’s gonna knock your socks off,” Bernier said.

The Weissman specializes in handling and treating rare book, paper, and photographic collections. Other departments and museums around campus have their own conservation and archival specialties.

Harvard’s history in preservation and conservation runs deep. In 1928, it established the first art conservation laboratory in the U.S., called the Department of Technical Research, in the Fogg Museum. It’s now called the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies.

Bernier compares the scale of Harvard’s preservation efforts to the Library of Congress. “Harvard has been collecting library materials since the 1600s,” she said. “It’s our responsibility to maintain it into the future.”

What makes Harvard’s collections of books, photographs, recordings, digital media, and ephemera so important? These original items are primary resources, and they can jumpstart new research inquiries. “They hold the witness of the time,” Bernier said. “It could be scientific data. It could be cultural and historical events. Preserving that, that powers research right there. Because it is close to the truth; it’s what actually happened.”

Scott Edwards, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and curator of ornithology, researches albatross specimens, looking at mercury poisoning over time in the species. Pictured in 2011, the MCZ has one of the oldest collections of black-footed albatross. The Department is a rich source of data on the environment and on the bird.

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In 2020, Dennis Piechota (from left), Adam Middleton, and Joe Green work on the coffin of Ankh-Khonsu with a team at the Semitic Museum (now known as the Museum of the Ancient Near East) that opens Egyptian coffins to analyze and photograph the coffins from all angles using scanning technology and 3D photography.

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Edith Young, camera operator at Imaging Services, scans a rare Chinese book in 2010 in the digital lab in Widener Library. “The library is committed to making our collections as open as possible,” Bernier said. “And the digitization step is needed for that. There’s also materials coming in that are ‘born digital.’ So where we used to get, for example, a bunch of manuscripts from a famous author, we’re now getting laptops, we’re now getting hard drives.”

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A storage space at the Museum of Comparative Zoology is pictured in 2017.

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Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School students participate in hands-on activities in 2022, examining endless rows of specimens as part of Marine Science Day at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

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As the renovation of Harvard Art Museums nears completion in 2014, a woman walks past the Forbes Pigment Collection.

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Jackson Kehoe, research assistant at Harvard Herbarium, displays collections in 2023 at the Harvard University Herbaria.

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Stuart Heebner, collections assistant (left), and Scott Fulton, conservator, move casts to be cleaned as part of a major project in 2007 to stabilize the plaster cast collection in the Peabody Museum. Preservation can take many forms, depending on an institution’s priorities or an object’s needs. Large collections require care and efficiency. “It’s almost like you’re in a field hospital, you know, and each one has to come through your care, as gently but quickly as possible,” Bernier said. “It could be just a couple of minutes, or it could be hundreds of hours. It really depends on what it needs or why it needs it.”

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Inside the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, Makeda Daniel, media and publications coordinator, spins a record on a turntable in 2019.

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Charles Orta ’16 (from left), Blake Lee ’16, Miye D’Oench ’16, and Sarah Fellay ’16 look at research materials in 2012 inside the Harvard-Yenching Library. “There’s a definite increase in interest from the faculty in object-based learning, and having students actually work with the original thing,” Bernier said. “It’s a very powerful and impactful experience to pick up a journal from 150 years ago and see what someone their age would have been saying about their experiences at Harvard or anywhere else.”

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Melissa Dole (right) reletters the seat numbers in Harvard Stadium using stencils. Steve Zarba (left), who heads the two-month-long project in 2018 said, “In 1903, they did this by hand, we are trying to preserve the old look.”

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Writings by Keats are pictured in 2011 in the Keats Room in Houghton Library that demonstrates cross-writing, an economical use of paper during a time when paper was valuable.

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Richard Ketchen, who tends to and maintains Harvard’s clocks, is pictured in 2020 working on a clock at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

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Conservator of the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants Scott Fulton works in 2019 to clean and restore objects from the glass flowers collection.

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In 2017, Dale Stinchcomb, curatorial assistant in Harvard Theatre Collection, examines a figurine by Jean-Auguste Barre of the young French ballerina Emma Livry (1842-1863) in “Le Papillon.”

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The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments disassembles the legendary Mark 1 computer in 2021 at the Science Center and transports it to the SEC, where it will be reassembled.

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Sara Frankel, the collections manager for the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, removes years of dust from the computers’ interior mechanisms during the 2021 move.

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Book conservator Katherine Beaty works in 2016 on a bound volume of business records, including partnership agreements and other related documents from the Baker Library at Harvard Business School. “It’s a complete rush,” said Bernier. “It is I think why a lot of conservators got into the field. It is an intimate process to have this item come to us from generations before, on our desk in front of us. And it’s in our hands and we have to steward it and care for it. It’s humbling as well. And exhilarating.”

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Book Conservator Catherine Badot-Costello uses a microscope in 2016 to work on an illuminated, bound parchment manuscript from Houghton Library, dated 1464. Conservators preserve, repair, and save rare books and unique library materials at the Weissman Preservation Center. Repairs to objects should be unobtrusive and focus on stabilizing the object, explained Bernier. “We try to be conservative in our approach.”

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In 2016, Anne Corrsin, conservation technician for Special Collections, cleans off an account book for medical services rendered by John Perkins (1698-1781) dating 1744 to 1780. Objects and collections are regularly reinterpreted and probed by new generations of scholars. A non-destructive analysis of the types of leather used to bind books, for example, could reveal new discoveries about trade routes, business, and the history of civilizations.

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Nancy Lloyd, objects conservator for the Straus Center for Conservation, restores the fallen soldier statue in 2005 in the Memorial Room at Memorial Church.

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Jun Imabayashi prunes a lilac plant in 2019 in the bonsai collection at the Arnold Arboretum. The meticulous pruning and care nurtures the existing plant.

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The Harvard Yard Archaeology Project continues in 2021 as students participate in an excavation of the grounds in front of Matthews Hall. Patricia Capone (left) speaks with Sarah Faber ’24 as she sifts through her findings.

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Robert Shure (left) and Noe Magana restore the John Harvard Statue in 2021 in Harvard Yard.

File photo by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer