Employment in Health and Safety for Conservators

Monona Rossol is one of our field’s greatest spokespersons for conservation lab and artists’ studio health and safety guidelines; she is also a fount of knowledge on changing regulations for use of conservation chemicals and understanding of personal protective procedures and equipment. Please visit her website at  www.artscraftstheatersafety.org/bio.html.
She does general safety and OSHA-required training sessions for art and art conservation students/faculty in universities, colleges, public and private museums, conservation laboratories, and more. What will happen when she retires? She has no understudy! Is there someone out there in AIC with a very strong chemistry background and understanding of conservation lab practices and artists’ materials who would be interested in branching out to include safety training and consultation to their skills? Monona promises to help direct such people to sources of technical training and to share her expertise and training materials. Once someone is qualified, she will gleefully recommend them to her clients. In fact, she has repeatedly offered to turn over her small nonprofit to someone qualified so she can do more writing.
I carried out a history interview with Monona in 2003 and have worried ever since about making sure she has protégés with whom she can share and possibly pass on a great body of knowledge and a very busy practice.  This is certainly an area of our field with increasing need and certain future employment.  If you are interested in exploring this possibility please contact Monona at ACTSNYC [at] cs.com.
–Submitted by Joyce Hill Stoner