Silvia Centeno

Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), Department of Scientific Research

Conserving, Preserving, and Understanding the Materials and Techniques of Works of Art

Centeno will discuss the importance of interdisciplinary teams of scientists, conservators, and art historians to understand the complex processes involved in the preservation and conservation of works of art. She will talk about her work and the personal experience as a women in science, technology, engineering, and math fields in South America.

She received a PhD in chemistry from Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina, and started at The Met as an L. Frohlich Fellow to study unusual gilding techniques in Pre-Columbian metalwork. Since 2012, she has been the principal investigator of a team of scientists that employs solid-state NMR and other methods to understand aging and degradation processes in oil paintings, funded by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation.