Conservation training and institutions

Conservation is a relatively new discipline which has evolved from a trade of highly skilled craftspeople working mainly with fine art to a profession committed to providing care to vulnerable cultural heritage items. Conservation extends beyond a list of painstaking cleaning and repair tasks to include professional values of ethics, public accountability, scholarship, and acting in consultation to ensure intergenerational access to the cultural heritage. These diverse skills underpin the training of conservators and distinguish the professional from the technician. There are a range of conservation institutions working internationally to communicate the value of conservation, share knowledge, and develop excellence in practice. Professional conservation practice is often focused on an area of specialism, many of which are defined by the materials worked upon, such as fine art, industrial heritage, paper, or archaeology. Other specialisms refer to techniques in practice such as preventive conservation (prevention of damage), conservation science (analytical investigation of materials and decay), and conservation teaching or management. As most conservators choose to specialize in one area, special interest groups have been formed within broader professional bodies