Network Steering Group

Louise Lawson is Head of Conservation at Tate.  In this role she is responsible for the leadership and strategic direction, development of Conservation at Tate. Her areas of interest and current research have focused on the conservation of performance, chorographic and dance-based artworks.  Her current research project as a Partner Investigator is Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021-2024).

Dr. Pip Laurenson ACR is a Professor of Conservation and Director of the MSc in the Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media, at UCL East. Pip has 30 years of experience in the conservation of contemporary art, establishing and leading Tate’s pioneering Time-based Media Conservation section from 1996 until 2010 before going on to be Head of Collection Care Research from 2010 to 2022. Pip is committed to interdisciplinary research that serves and responds to the challenges facing the conservation of contemporary collections in the 21st Century. With Jill Sterrett, Pip instigated Matters in Media Art a collaborative project between Tate, SFMOMA and MoMA with the New Art Trust in 2005. From 2018-2022 she led the Mellon Foundation funded project Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum. She is also a member of the Steering Committee for INCCA, the International Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art.

Deborah has gained conservation experience from working at National Museums Scotland, National Museums Liverpool, Birmingham Museums Trust and now at Tate. 

She has a wide breadth of experience of collections and material types, with a keen interest in modern materials and their use and constructs with contemporary art. She currently manages the Sculpture and Installations Conservation team where her focus is on the Hepworth studio, garden and summer house, managing hazardous materials within collections and kinetic works. 

Alice Watkins is a Sculpture and Installation Art Conservator at Tate, where she works across Loans, International Programme and Tate St Ives. She holds an MSc and Professional Doctorate (PDRes) in Contemporary Art Conservation from the University of Amsterdam.

Her master's thesis focused on the ethics of replacing components in technological artworks. Additionally, she conducted research into the use of photogrammetry for documenting large outdoor sculpture. Her current focus areas are in kinetic, optical and light-based artworks. 

Brian Castriota is Lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media at University College London, Time-Based Media Conservator at the National Galleries Scotland, and Freelance Conservator for Time-Based Media and Contemporary Art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He completed graduate-level training in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 2014, and earned a Ph.D. in History of Art from the University of Glasgow in 2019 as part of the Marie Skłowdoska-Curie ITN New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA).  

Lorraine Maule is a Senior Paintings Conservator at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) and has over 25 years professional experience as a conservator in civic and national collections. In this time, she has expanded her role to promote the study of and interest in contemporary art conservation. She is a founding member of the NGS Installation, Media and Performance Working Group. She is a consultant in the acquisition process of contemporary and performance pieces; has considerable experience in working with living artists and has devised a project to develop artist’s interview methodologies at NGS. She is the Conservation lead in the NGS contemporary exhibition programme and is the lead conservator for Artist Rooms (AR) collection, jointly owned with Tate. Lorraine is also involved in many professional forums. Selected presentations: Co-organiser of International Conference: Sustaining Art, People, Practice Planet in Contemporary Art Conservation, 2022; The display of Contemporary and Ephemeral art at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 2018; Off the Peg or Tailor Made: Conservation and the ‘fit’ for collecting Performance Art, 2017; Collecting Contemporary Art Part 2: Visit to the National Galleries storage facility - in focus Clare Barclay, 2016, Dirty Linen: Public Display, Conservation and Handling.  Blood Sweat and Tears: Bodily Fluids in Contemporary Art, 2009