Currently, Conservator of Objects at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ms. Gänsicke will join the Museum’s Antiquities Conservation department at the Getty Villa this July. “It is with great pleasure that I welcome Susanne Gänsicke to the Getty,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “As the new Senior Conservator of Antiquities, Susanne will not only continue the fine tradition established by her predecessor for the department, but will bring a new perspective to managing the collection at the Villa and to the partnerships we pursue with institutions both in the U.S. and abroad. In addition, as we solidify plans for a reinstallation of the Getty Villa, she will play a critical role in that project. We all look forward to working with her.”
“In accepting this appointment as the Getty’s new Senior Conservator of Antiquities, I am acutely aware of the responsibility and trust that will be placed in me as a guardian of the Museum’s magnificent collection of ancient Greek and Roman art,” said Ms. Gänsicke. “I look forward to working with the professional staff of the Museum in continuing the preservation and display of its world-famous collection, as well as further advancing the collaboration with institutions and organizations worldwide. From its inception, antiquities conservation at the Getty Museum has provided leadership in the field of conservation and technical study of ancient art, a tradition that I am deeply committed to continuing.”
Since 1990, Ms. Gänsicke has been employed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the Department of Conservation and Collections Management/Object Conservation. During her tenure, she more recently worked on the relocation of the MFA’s iconic monumental Old Kingdom calcite sculpture of the Egyptian King Menkaure in 2010, the conservation and complicated relocation and installation of a monolithic 13-foot Roman marble sculpture of Juno from 2011–2013, and on the preservation of the highly fragmented and perhaps most important find ever of a group of ancient musical instruments known as auloi in 2014 (excavated by the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Expedition at Meroe, Sudan in 1921). She is currently the recipient of an Individual Grant from the Asian Cultural Council, NY, and will conduct research on the preservation of metalwork in temples and shrines of the Kathmandu Valley in March 2016.
Prior to joining the MFA, Ms. Gänsicke was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Objects Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she worked on the conservation and technical examination of ancient Egyptian objects and other archaeological artifacts in the museum’s collection. She also served as a volunteer research assistant for the MFA’s Expedition at Gebel Barkal in Sudan, where she researched and created reconstructive drawings of the architectural remains of the Napatan temple site. She began her career in the U.S. with an advanced-level conservation internship at the MFA, Boston, working on the conservation of ancient Egyptian objects. In addition to her excavation work at Gebel Barkal, Ms. Gänsicke has also been a site conservator at the New York University-Apis Expedition at Memphis, Egypt.
Ms. Gänsicke currently lectures at the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology at MIT and for Harvard University Extension School. She has taught in the Field School for Architectural Conservators at the American Research Center in Luxor, Egypt and served as faculty at the Museum of Fine Arts Seminar. She is currently associate editor of the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. Previously she has served as an abstractor for the Getty Conservation Institute’s publication Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts (AATA) and also a grant reviewer for the Getty Foundation. She is also a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation.
Ms. Gänsicke holds a certificate in archaeological conservation from the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, Germany. Her research interests include technical studies of Egyptian and Nubian material culture, ancient and historic metal working techniques, issues of site preservation, and relocation of monumental ancient sculptures.