Rosie Grayburn’s first brush with “green” practices in art conservation was with the Getty Conservation Institute, where her team aimed to create a more environmentally friendly reformulation of Incralac, an alloy coating used in bronze outdoor statues. In the coming years, while employed as an associate professor of art conservation and head of Winterthur Museum’s Scientific Research & Analysis Laboratory, she’d become a research coordinator for Greener Solvents, a project conducted by Sustainability in Conservation.
Motivated by the need for more centralized research and information on safe and sustainable practices within the industry, Greener Solvents has garnered great interest from environmentally conscious conservators. Grayburn, alongside project director Gwen Fife, spoke about their research with paintings conservator Roxy Sperber on Green Tea, a podcast ran by the American Institute for Conservation’s Sustainability Committee.
Prior to the project’s deployment, there existed no field-wide survey on solvent use since the turn of the millennium. A survey of approximately 880 conservators worldwide, assisted by undergrad researchers at UD, showed that solvent use had changed significantly since 1998, and that despite widespread interest in improving the safety of the work, many industry professionals conducted their jobs without safety or chemical hygiene trainings. Deployed last year, Greener Solvents aims to facilitate the use of materials that have minimal impact on the environment and are safer for the artwork and workers. The project is transforming the industry definition of “green,” expanding from the concept of bio-based manufacturing to a more holistic philosophy.
Greener Solvents strives for conservators to have clear understandings of how they can improve the sustainability of their work. Workers can scale back on hazardous materials, experimenting with combinations of safer alternatives, and educate themselves on occupational hazards, hazard communication codes, and a growing set of databases and resources the project is currently developing. An introductory handbook is already available, and more thorough reports on research findings will be available in the near future.
Grayburn was recently joined the 2025 DENIN Faculty Fellow cohort. During her fellowship, she will work to develop a Sustainable Conservation Hub that makes green conservation methodology and research accessible to current and future conservators.
Listen to the Greener Solvents episode of Green Tea here.