Preservation Consulting

From works of art on paper to historic tools, digital media to photographic materials, everything we love needs protection to keep it around for our own enjoyment and for many years to come. Beth Heller Conservation is here to help, with on-site or online/remote visits as needed.

“We loved our time with Beth as our CAP Assessor. I knew that I liked her immediately when we spoke on the phone and that continued when we met in person for the assessment. She was an excellent listener and asked insightful questions. She really took the time to get to know our organization – our challenges and successes – and gave thoughtful advice based on our needs. She dove into our collections and helped us sort through our projects. She has continued to occasionally check in with us since then and send us links or information that she thinks we might find useful. Our final report has been an excellent roadmap for our collections and historic houses. The suggestions she gave for the report were staged into short term, mid-term, and long-term projects. I found these to be built out appropriately for a timeline that we could really follow and was tailored to our needs and staff size.”

Kaitlyn Donaldson, Curator, Lorain Historical Society, Ohio

Services include:

• Inventory
• Rehousing
• Assessment of collection-storage and exhibit environments
• Improving physical and online access to objects and information
• Item-level and collection-wide condition surveys
• Policy and procedures document review, including collections management, environmental monitoring, pest management and other core collections documents
• Policy and procedures documents writing and training
• Support for museum accreditation preparation
• Emergency response preparedness assessment
• Emergency response plan writing and training
• Fine Art pre- and post-exhibition or travel assessments
• Fine Art purchase condition examinations
• Collection Assessor for the Collection Assessment for Preservation (CAP) Program
• Combining my first career as a psychotherapist, I also offer preservation management coaching sessions to those in leadership positions in libraries, archives and museums. Sometimes it helps to talk with someone outside your organization who understands the challenges and can see the opportunities.  Please note that I am not currently licensed as a psychotherapist and am not offering psychotherapy services.