The Conservation Center

The Conservation Center is the largest and most comprehensive private art conservation laboratory in the country. With 40 years of experience, The Center is a leader in the field of art preservation, evolving new treatments and methods to adapt to the rapidly changing art world. They have cared for fine art from some of the country’s most prestigious private collections, museums, galleries, insurance companies, and corporations. Their conservators are expertly trained in the treatment of paintings, works of art on paper, photographs, textiles, murals, antique and fine furniture, rare books, frames and gilding, objects, and sculpture. The Center also offers specialty services in framing and display, digital restoration, disaster response, storage, collection assessment, and transportation and installation.

Founded in 1983, The Center grew from a handful of painting conservators to 30 staff members with a wide range of specializations. In 2012, The Conservation Center moved from Chicago’s River North neighborhood to its new home in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor in West Town. With the help of Studio Gang Architects, we revitalised a late 19th-century warehouse, previously used to store gold, into a state-of-the-art conservation laboratory.

The treatments executed in The Conservation Center’s laboratory are in compliance with the American Institute for Conservation Code of Ethics and Guidelines for Practice. When conserving a piece, their goal is to preserve the artist’s original intent by using non-invasive and reversible techniques and utilising archival-grade materials, thus forming their treatment philosophy: less is more.