Gretel Evans ACR MA BA
Associate Director
&
Head of Conservation
After graduating from Durham University in 1997, Gretel worked on several significant conservation projects within the National Museums of Scotland including the creation of Museum of Scotland, and then the Scottish National War Museum. Later with Glasgow Museums, she was a lead member of the conservation team involved in the creation of the award-winning Riverside Museum. Subsequently, Gretel’s work in Antarctica as part of the Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project allowed her the opportunity to expand on her already extensive conservation skills.
As well as practical conservation work, Gretel has designed, organised and contributed to seminars on behalf of the Institute of Field Archaeologists on the contribution of conservation to archaeology in Scotland and was shortlisted for the Award for the Care of Collections at 2010’s ICON Conservation Awards on her team’s work carried out as part of Glasgow Museums’ Riverside Project. More recently Gretel has lectured to MA Textile Conservation students at Glasgow University on topics such as Pest Management, and Conservation in Practise.
In addition to Gretel’s demonstrable technical abilities and experience as a conservator, her training as an archaeologist at UCL has enabled her to participate in many excavations including the excavation of a Bronze Age round barrow in Eastbourne and the early prehistoric waterlogged site at Flag Fen, Peterborough, as well as sites abroad. She has experience of on-site conservation: using specialist lifting techniques during the excavation of a Viking warrior burial to recover fragile artefacts; recovering fragile ceramics and textiles from Bronze Age cists; recently recovering organic material from a crannog site.
Gretel has been an Accredited Conservator-Restorer since 2005 and now acts as an Assessor for the Professional Accreditation of Conservator-Restorer’s scheme administered by ICON. She also undertakes collections care audits of small museums for the Association of Independent Museums Collections Care Audit Scheme.
Selected Bibliography
AOC Archaeology: Project management: conservation of Mons Meg; Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Library Salvage.
RSHRP, Antarctic Heritage Trust: Winter conservator on the Ross Sea Heritage Restoration Project. Lived and worked in Antarctica for winter season conserving artefacts from early explorers huts (Captain Scott and Shackleton). Work involved assessment, conservation, photography and documentation of a very large number of varied objects, some of which are particularly iconic. Living as part of a small team for many months in a remote and extreme environment developed personal qualities such as communication, collaboration and support.
Riverside Project, Glasgow Museums: Project conservator role encompassed remedial conservation, supervision of assistant conservators and preventative conservation of transport, technology and social history collections. Experience gained in liaising with curators and designers; advising on mounts; pest management; and environmental monitoring.
Museum of Scotland Project, National Museums of Scotland: Worked on Museum of Scotland Project and gained invaluable experience in participation in creation of new National Museum. Surveyed objects producing condition reports and treatment proposals; conserved large number and variety of archaeological, historic and social history artefacts. Consulted with curators and designers on proposed treatments, mounting and display methods for artefacts, communicating conservation issues.
Conservation of the Cramond Lioness, National Museums of Scotland: completed conservation of the Cramond Lioness, a large stone sculpture of Roman date found in the late 1990’s and considered to be one of the most significant Scottish archaeological finds of Roman sculpture.
