Meet the Conservators

Julia Campbell-Such

Assistant Conservator, Frames

Julia is Assistant Conservator of Frames at AGO. She is currently working to conserve the AGO’s large collection of historic frames and to pair them with paintings in the AGO’s collection. She holds a Master of Art Conservation degree from Queen’s University (2018), specializing in Objects, and has completed fellowships at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and the Canadian Conservation Institute. Prior to her work in conservation, Julia trained and worked as a cabinetmaker. Her woodworking has been exhibited at places like the Craft Ontario Gallery, the Art Gallery of Windsor, and the Worker’s Art and Heritage Center. She is interested in preserving the histories and cultures of craftspeople and in connecting conservation with the right of communities to access their heritage.

Lisa Ellis

Conservator, Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Lisa holds B.A.s from McGill in English Literature and Art History, M.A.s in Art Conservation (Queen's) and Art History (U of T) and has studied arts and crafts, spending a year in OCA's glass program. She completed internships at numerous museums in Canada and abroad: at Parks Canada, the Redpath and McCord Museum in Montreal, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Getty Museum, Historic New England, and the MFA, Boston, and spent time with archaeological material at the Agora Excavations in Athens, Greece, and at the Institute of Nautical Archaeology labs in Bodrum, Turkey.

Christina McLean-Alsaidi

Assistant Conservator, Paintings

Christina G.A. McLean-Alsaidi is the Assistant Conservator of Paintings at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She holds a Master of Art Conservation degree from Queen's University, specializing in paintings, as well as, a BSc from the University of Calgary. Christina’s early conservation training included internships at Fraser Spafford-Ricci Art and Archival Inc. and the AGO, where she developed practical skills in both private practice and institutional settings. Prior to rejoining the AGO, she served as the Artist Documentation Program (ADP) fellow at the Menil Collection and Whitney Museum of American Art, where she conducted significant research on documenting the artist’s voice and perspectives. With broad experience in treating various types of paintings, Christina is particularly drawn to the unique challenges of conserving modern and contemporary surfaces.

Claire Molgat Laurin

Assistant Conservator, Time-Based Media

Claire is the Assistant Time-Based Media Conservator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and is dedicated to preserving artworks that progress over time or have a technological aspect, from video installations to LED artworks. Claire completed a fellowship with Bek & Frohnert Conservation, a leading time-based media practice in New York, and has pursued conservation work at DL HERITAGE in Montréal, Het Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) and the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and Vtape in Toronto. She holds a Master of Science and Advanced Professional Degree from the University of Amsterdam in the conservation of cultural heritage, specializing in contemporary art and time-based media, and is a graduate of the Fleming College Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management program. She has also pursued studies in computer science at the University of British Columbia.

Meaghan Monaghan

Conservator, Paintings

Meaghan Monaghan is responsible for the conservation of paintings in the collection of the AGO. After earning a Master of Art Conservation from Queen’s University, she held internships and fellowships at several international museums including a Samuel H. Kress Fellowship in Denmark and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the USA. Before joining the AGO in 2017, she worked as Assistant Conservator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada. She is a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FIIC) and is actively involved in the development of education and outreach initiatives in the conservation field.

Meaghan has published and lectured on the conservation of oil paintings, murals, and painted banners. Her most recent publication in Studies in Conservation was a collaboration with the Canadian Conservation institute (CCI) and focused on degradation phenomena in modern commercial oil paints used by renowned Canadian artist Rita Letendre. She continues to collaborate with several Canadian museums and CCI on an in-depth technical study of Letendre’s paint materials and techniques.

Rachel Stark

Assistant Conservator, Contemporary Art

Rachel is an Assistant Conservator at the AGO. She is a graduate of the Queen’s University Master of Art Conservation program, the Fleming College Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management program, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from OCADU. She has worked internationally in Italy and Turkey on projects run by Stanford University, Brock University, the Sicilian Soprintendenza del Mare, and the Bodrum Institute for Nautical Archaeology. In Canada, Rachel has enjoyed a range of positions at the Royal BC Museum, the Reynolds Alberta Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada, as well as working in private practice. Rachel’s experience with a wide array of materials has proven valuable when considering the complexity and variety that comes with contemporary art.

Maria Sullivan

Head of Conservation

Maria Sullivan is currently responsible for overseeing and coordinating the day-to-day activities of the AGO Conservation Department. She worked as a painting conservator at the AGO for a number of years prior to taking on her current position. Maria has family connections to three generations of art restorers/conservators and fell in love with the profession while working in The Netherlands with her uncle and cousin. She has an undergraduate degree in art history and received a master's degree in conservation, specializing in paintings, from the State University College at Buffalo in 1995. She pursued internships and fellowships in painting conservation at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Intermuseum Conservation Association, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She first came to the AGO in 1997 on a fellowship from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In 2002, Maria served as Getty Senior Fellow and Lecturer in Painting Conservation at the State University College at Buffalo.

Tessa Thomas

Conservator, Works on Paper

Tessa first joined the AGO as the Samuel H. Kress Fellow in Paper Conservation in 2013, and returned in 2021 as Conservator, Works on Paper, OPT. She holds a Master of Art Conservation degree from Queen's University and a BA in Art History with a minor in Chemistry from Winthrop University (SC). Tessa has served as a Conservator for the Toronto Public Library, Senior Conservator at the Archives of Ontario, Assistant Conservator, Works on Paper at the AGO, and Project Conservator at The National Archives (UK). She also completed internships at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Royal Ontario Museum, and was a 2008 Helena Rubenstein Summer Intern, Museum Archives at MoMA.

Valerie Tomlinson

Conservator, Contemporary Art

As Conservator of Contemporary Art, Valerie Tomlinson assesses and prepares collection items and incoming loans for exhibition, assesses and oversees care of collection items for outgoing loan, as well as assessing new acquisitions for treatment and care needs on display or in storage. Over her career she has given conservation treatment to everything from Viking archaeological material, to a fully grown taxidermied wildebeest, to the statues on Parliament Hill, and been a site conservator in the Arctic. Valerie has a Masters degree in Art Conservation, a Bachelors degree in Chemistry, a college diploma in Cabinetmaking, as well as training in fine art, physics, several languages and an esoteric range of other subjects (such as Navigation for air search and rescue in the Arctic). She has worked as a conservator at museums, heritage institutions, art institutions, and private practice across Canada from the Arctic to Ottawa, and in several other countries from Norway to New Zealand.

Sjoukje van der Laan

Conservator, Contemporary Art

Sjoukje van der Laan has been with the Art Gallery of Ontario since 2016 as the Assistant Conservator, Contemporary Art. She holds a Master’s degree and a Professional Doctorate (PD. Res.) in Modern & Contemporary Art Conservation from the University of Amsterdam, and a Bachelor degree in Art History from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands). Previously, she worked in the conservation studios of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Stedelijk Museum Aktuele Kunst (S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium) , and for the modern and contemporary art collection of the Dutch government. Prior to coming to Canada, she had a private conservation studio in The Netherlands, specialized in contemporary art conservation. Her specialization gives her a strong familiarity with the conservation of a wide variety of modern (synthetic) materials, kinetic art, electronic art and complex contemporary art installations.

Sandra Webster-Cook

Conservator, Emerita

Sandra Webster-Cook completed studies in Honors Science (Chemistry specialization), Art History and Studio art before graduating from the Queen's University Art Conservation program. She became an employee of the AGO in 1987 and was responsible for the conservation of the historical and modern paintings in the collection of the AGO until her retirement.

Her work on the AGO collection includes research on the paintings of Cornelius Krieghoff and Tom Thomson. She carried out the research and a major conservation treatment of Jean Siméon Chardin’s masterpiece, Jar of Apricots. Further research and treatment in the AGO collection focused on Rembrandt von Rijn’s Portrait of a Lady with a Lap Dog, Portrait of a Lady with a Handkerchief (from Rembrandt’s studio), with the support of members of the Rembrandt Research Project, and Peter Paul Rubens’ The Raising of the Cross.

More recently, she collaborated in new scientific and art-historical research on Picasso’s Blue period paintings, with an international team of scientists and experts. The research was presented in the blockbuster exhibition Picasso: Painting the Blue Period, co-organized by the AGO and The Phillips Collection, Washington, in 2021-2022.

Joan Weir

Conservator, Works on Paper

Joan Weir has a BFA in fine art from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1981) with a specialization in printmaking. Post-graduation she was a scholarship recipient of the Banff Center School of Fine Arts – Winter Cycle Studio Programme 1981-83. Joan graduated from Queen’s University Art Conservation graduate program (M.A.C 1989) with a specialization in paper objects. In 1999/2000 she was selected to participate in a Canadian/Chinese cultural technology exchange in Beijing, China where she lived and worked for four months. She has worked as conservator/consultant in private practice, a project coordinator and a registrar for numerous Canadian institutions and private collections. Joan first came to the AGO during the Stage Three project as Deputy Registrar on contract in 1991-2. In 2002 she joined the AGO Conservation Department as Conservator of the varied collection of historic, modern and contemporary works of art on paper.

Katharine Whitman

Conservator, Photography

An alumni of the Queen’s University graduate program in Art Conservation, Katharine is currently the photograph conservator for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Prior to working at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Katharine was a two-year Mellon Fellow in the Advanced Residency Program (ARP) at the George Eastman Museum and the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Her work there culminated in the paper, The History and Conservation of Glass Supported Photographs (2007). Katharine was a Conservation Guest Scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, in 2018. Katharine is also sought-after speaker and educator in the field. She has lectured and taught workshops on the conservation of photographs on glass in North America, Europe, and Asia. She is currently writing a book on the History, Preservation and Conservation of Photographs on Glass (working title) to be published by the Getty Conservation Institute.

Conservation Staff Gridlist

Julia Campbell-Such

Lisa Ellis

Christina McLean-Alsaidi

Claire Molgat Laurin

Meaghan Monaghan

Rachel Stark

Maria Sullivan

Tessa Thomas

Valerie Tomlinson

Sjoukje van der Laan

Sandra Webster-Cook

Joan Weir

Katharine Whitman

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