Departments

Conservation

The Conservation Department has primary responsibility for the conservation of the Collection. It is made up of the following departments:

Framing

Staff in the Framing Department restore original frames, acquire suitable period frames and design and make new ones.

Conservation

Conservators' main activities are cleaning, restoration, research, contributing to scholarly and exhibition catalalogues, and ensuring that pictures lent and borrowed by the Gallery are in a sound state.

Collections Management

Art Handling

The Art Handling Department is responsible for the safe handling, movement and display of the collection and of loans to exhibitions.

Registrars

The Registrars Department is responsible for three main areas of work: arranging the safe transport of works of art; loan arrangements including indemnity and insurance; the inventory of the collection and records of all works of art coming to or leaving the Gallery.

Photographic

The Photographic Department undertakes technical photography of the collection, in both conventional and digital format, for use by the National Gallery and the National Gallery Company.

The main tasks are to produce records of works of art during conservation, to support the Gallery's exhibition and education programmes, supply images for publication and to provide a historical record of the Gallery and its activities.

The images produced are stored in controlled conditions in the Photographic Archive.

Further Information

Caring for the paintings
Read more about the work of conservators at the Gallery

National Gallery Technical Bulletin
The latest research by curators, scientists and conservators