This past fall, I traveled to the Netherlands, where I was a visiting conservator at the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg in Maastricht. I mostly worked on a group of 17th and 18th-century oil on canvas paintings from Kasteel Amerongen, part of an ongoing restoration of the Utrecht building and grounds. Treatment of the full-size portraits included surface cleaning, stabilization of primary and secondary supports, consolidation of lifting / flaking paint, sample analysis, removal of disruptive overpaint and varnishes related to earlier restorations, thinning of uneven / discolored varnish, fills, inpainting / toning, and application of isolating and final varnish layers. Treatments took place in the SRAL studios, and in the “public studio” of the adjacent Bonnefantenmuseum. I returned to D.C. to continue the work begun in my earlier Smithsonian Institution fellowship, through an extension generously funded by the Kress Foundation. My SI research focuses on condition issues in a group of Abstract Expressionist paintings from the collection of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden which I presented at AIC. In September, I will begin Ph.D. studies in the Preservation Studies Doctoral Program at the University of Delaware. (Submitted by Dawn Rogala - photo to the right from Dawn's summer internship at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).