Meet the Fellows

Cornelia Busslehner is a paper conservator who graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria, in October 2022. In her diploma thesis, she studied the effects of a non-aqueous conservation treatment using Benzotriazole in the vapor phase on paper damaged by copper corrosion with Raman, FTIR, and XRF spectroscopy. She has worked as a scientific assistant, analyzing historical pigments, and completed a Fellowship at the Library of Congress in the paper conservation department. At The Metropolitan Museum of Art, she studies the copper green pigments in Indian and Persian art affected by copper corrosion.

Leslie Zacharie holds a master's degree in paper and parchment conservation from the Institut National du Patrimoine in Paris, France. Prior to that, she completed a bachelor's degree in art history. Leslie has gained valuable experience through internships at institutions such as the Center Pompidou in Paris, the Bonnat-Helleu Museum in Bayonne, France, and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, USA. For her master's thesis, Leslie focused on the treatment of an early 20th-century opaque watercolor on paper. Her research primarily centered around the aqueous cleaning of a water-sensible painting with the use of gels. In addition, Leslie is passionate about the study of papers and artistic techniques specific to South Asia and Southeast Asia.