Laura Downey Staneff

Laura Downey Staneff received a Master of Arts and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Art Conservation from the State University College at Buffalo in 1994, and a Master of Arts in Art History (history of photography) from the University of Arizona in 2002.

She attended the first five of the Mellon Collaborative Workshops in Photograph Conservation and in 1999-2000 was a Mellon Fellow in the Advanced Residency Program in Photograph Conservation at the George Eastman House/Image Permanence Institute. Laura held conservation positions at the Balboa Art Conservation Center and the Arizona State Museum and was Museum Conservator at the University of New Mexico Art Museum from 2001-2004; since 1997 she has advised the Center for Creative Photography on preservation of its collections. She currently resides near Denver, CO, where her private conservation practice, Silverpoint Art Conservation LLC, serves individual and institutional clients throughout the west.

Laura served as President of the Western Association for Art Conservation in 2005-2006 as well as Program Chair of the Photographic Materials Specialty Group of the American Institute for Conservation 2005-2007. She has taught undergraduate and graduate-level classes in art materials and museum preservation as an adjunct at the University of New Mexico and the University of Denver, and has instructed workshops in collections care, photographic materials, and disaster preparedness. Her professional presentations included topics such as the chemistry of lithography, conservation of a photographic album containing Native American images, and the history of photographic mounts. She also supervised a number of "pre-program" conservation students and summer interns from the graduate conservation programs.