Formerly known as the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington D.C. first opened to the public in 1932. The Freer story, however, began in 1906, when Charles Lang Freer gave his collection of Asian and American art to the nation, a gift he had proposed to President Theodore Roosevelt a year before. By exploring the differences in arts from around the world, the Freer Gallery of Art would unite, in Freer’s own words, “modern work with masterpieces of certain periods of high civilisation harmonious in spiritual suggestion.”

Join us for an in depth talk by Donna Strahan, Head of Conservation and Scientific Research​. We will look closer into Ancient metallurgy, technology and treatments for conservation at NMAA​.​

About the speakers

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Donna Strahan received a B.A. in Chinese Language and a M.A. in the Conservation of Ethnographic and Archaeological Objects from George Washington University. She has been a conservator at the Conservation Analytical Laboratory, Smithsonian Institution; and at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

She was Head of Conservation, at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco for eight years. From 2006 to 2014 Donna was the Conservator in charge of Asian objects at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Currently she is the Head of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research, Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Donna was also the Head Conservator at the archaeological excavations of Harappa, Pakistan; Tell Es-Sweyhat, Syria; and Troy, Turkey where she set up field laboratories and trained students. Donna is a guest lecturer at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and has lectured and published widely.