Meet the Staff

Guillemette Caupin joined the department in 2023 as Associate Conservator, working on the Tang Wing capital project. She focuses on the survey and conservation of the Modern and Contemporary collections. Prior to joining, she worked in private practices in Europe and the United States, focusing on Modern and Contemporary painting conservation and large-scale mural projects. She is a graduate of Les Ecoles de Condé (France) in conservation and restoration of easel paintings. Guillemette completed a master’s degree in art history from Paris Nanterre University (France) and is currently finishing her Ph.D. in Art History at La Sorbonne University (France), studying the relationship between conservators and living artists alongside their artistic process.

Shawn Digney-Peer received a BS in French language and studio art from Georgetown University (Washington, DC). He obtained a postgraduate diploma in the conservation of easel paintings at the Courtauld Institute (London, UK) and then undertook an internship and Samuel H. Kress Fellowship at the Hamilton Kerr Institute (University of Cambridge, UK), where he treated old master pictures. In 2005, Shawn moved to New York for an Andrew W. Mellon fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum and was hired the following year to care for nineteenth-century, modern, and contemporary works.

Isabelle Duvernois joined the staff of the Department of Paintings Conservation in 2005. She works on paintings from the Modern and Contemporary collection, the Leonard A. Lauder Collection, and other curatorial departments. Her work focuses on the treatment, examination, and research of artists materials and techniques. She recently collaborated with curators on MMA exhibitions, The Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism (2023), Picasso: A Cubist Commission in Brooklyn (2023), Cubism and the Trompe L’oeil Tradition (2022), as well as on projects outside the Museum: Matisse: The Red Studio: (MoMA 2022), Modigliani Up Close (Barnes 2022). She received her training at the Conservation Center and the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (2003).

Michael Gallagher served as Sherman Fairchild Chairman of the Department of Paintings Conservation from 2005-2023. Michael specializes in the conservation of old master paintings and has published and lectured on many that he has conserved, including works by Bassano, Cranach, Giaquinto, Le Brun, Perino del Vaga, Reynolds, and Velázquez. He undertook postgraduate training at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge, England. Following a fellowship at the J. Paul Getty Museum, he worked for the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth; the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; and the National Galleries of Scotland.

Charlotte Hale joined the Department of Paintings Conservation at The Met in 1987. She specializes in the examination and treatment of nineteenth century European paintings. Among recent conservation treatments are pictures by Delacroix, Degas, Renoir, Seurat, and Van Gogh. She has worked closely with curatorial colleagues on exhibitions including Van Gogh: Irises and Roses (2015), and Seurat's Circus Sideshow (2017), and Van Gogh’s Cypresses (2023). Charlotte received her training in the conservation of paintings at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Kristin Holder joined the department in 2020 as an intern, followed by two years as a Research Scholar, before joining the staff in 2023. She specializes in the structural conservation of panel paintings. Kristin received a BFA in painting from the University of Washington, an MFA in painting from the American University, and an MS/MA in Conservation and Art History from New York University’s Conservation Center and Institute of Fine Arts.

José Lazarte joined the Department of Paintings Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum in 2016 to complete a Mellon Fellowship followed by a Research Scholar position, and became a member of the staff in 2019. He works primarily with European paintings of the 16th to the 18th centuries and American paintings, including works from colonial Latin America. José received a BA in Art Conservation (with a minor in studio arts) from the University of Delaware and an MA in Science from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Graduate Program in Art Conservation in 2016. During his studies, he undertook internships at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Prado Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Derek Lintala arrived in the department in 2022 as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Conservation Fellow and joined the staff in 2024. He is a graduate of the Kress Program in Paintings Conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he received his MA in the History of Art and Archaeology and MS in the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works in 2022. Prior to completing his graduate internship at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., he interned in the Paintings Conservation Department at the Met conserving frames. Before his graduate studies, Derek worked as a fine art packing technician and interned at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Among his interests is the power of technical imaging in shaping the interpretation and understanding of paintings. 

Dorothy Mahon received her MA in the history of art and a certificate of advanced study in conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She was appointed to the staff in 1981 and has conserved paintings spanning the collection, with emphasis on the technical examination and treatment of European paintings of the 15th to 19th centuries and American paintings, including works by Veronese, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Goya, Delacroix, Homer, and Sargent. She has participated in the supervision and training of many graduate interns and fellows, and has served as a member of the editorial board of the Metropolitan Museum Journal.

Alan Miller specializes in the structural conservation of panel paintings. He received an MA in art history from the University of Washington and a postgraduate diploma in the conservation of easel paintings from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Alan has been active in the Getty Panel Paintings Initiative, participating in the structural treatment of Durer's Adam and Eve panels at the Prado and structural treatment of Vasari's Last Supper panels, which were damaged in the 1966 Florence flood. His research interests include development of new spring mechanisms for use on secondary supports of previously thinned panels. See his LinkedIn profile.

Cynthia Moyer graduated from William Smith College in 1975 with a BA in anthropology and sociology. Starting in 1974, she served informal apprenticeships in the furniture conservation field in Philadelphia and New York before establishing a private practice in 1977, specializing in gilded wood and finishes. She continued to train and joined the AIC in 1983. She has worked on contract for the Richard H. Jenrette Foundation, now CAHPT, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the MFA Boston. After a Metropolitan Museum contract in 2006–7 in objects conservation, she joined the Department of Paintings Conservation in 2009.

Jeanette O'Keefe has worked at the Metropolitan Museum since 2003, and has held positions in the Director's and President's Offices. She joined the Sherman Fairchild Center for Paintings Conservation in 2020. She received her BA in art history and studio art from Binghamton University, an MLIS from Pratt Institute, and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Collections Management and Care from The George Washington University.

Evan Read works in tandem with the department's conservators on a wide range of treatment and research projects. He handles all aspects of the creation and management of photography, x-radiography, infrared reflectography, and infrared and ultraviolet photography. He earned a BS in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MFA from Hunter College in painting. Evan has an art practice centered on digital printing.

Sophie Scully joined the Department of Paintings Conservation in 2012 as a post-graduate intern, going on to be an Annette de la Renta fellow and a Research Scholar before joining the staff in 2017. She works primarily on European paintings from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, with a focus on the technical study of early Northern paintings. She received her BA in art from Williams College, and an MA in art history and an advanced certificate in conservation from the New York University Institute of Fine Arts in 2013.