Associate Curator of Conservation
About
Suzanne Davis is associate curator for conservation and head of the Conservation Department at the Kelsey Museum, where she oversees the preservation of the museum’s 100,000+ artifacts and historic building. She currently directs conservation programs for the Kelsey’s Abydos Middle Cemetery project in Egypt, the El-Kurru and Jebel Barkal projects in Sudan, and the Notion Archaeological Survey project in Turkey. She also serves as affiliated faculty for the University's Museum Studies Program.
She received graduate degrees in art history and conservation from the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation (AIC). Prior to joining the Kelsey in 2001, she was a conservator for the Underwater Archaeology Branch of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, DC. Suzanne is currently the president of the AIC and serves on the board of its philanthropic affiliate, the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation.
Her primary research focuses on investigating conservation problems and improving preservation outcomes for archaeological sites and collections. But as a director of conservation for multiple sites, her research interests also include community-engaged practice, site presentation, and visitor experience. She is committed to developing more inclusive, collaborative practice in archaeological conservation and has also written about business practice in the discipline more broadly, with a focus on improving gender equity.
In addition to her conservation work for the Kelsey, she has co-curated two exhibitions at the museum, Graffiti as Devotion along the Nile (2019–2020, with Geoff Emberling), and Conserving Antiquity, (2012–2013, with Claudia Chemello).
