Catherine R. Matsen

Biography

Catherine Matsen has worked as a conservation scientist at Winterthur Museum’s Scientific Research and Analysis Laboratory (SRAL) since 2003. She has undertaken analysis on all types of decorative arts in the museum collection using the techniques of XRF, SEM-EDS, FTIR, Raman, XRD, GC-MS, pyGC-MS and peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) with MALDI-TOF. Catherine’s primary research areas include Chinese export lacquer, American silver objects, Pennsylvania German fraktur and architectural paint analysis of the museum’s period rooms and estate buildings.​

In addition to advising, teaching and working with more than 200 WUDPAC students over the years, in October 2018 Catherine taught a six-day course on instrumental techniques used in conservation to students in CRAFT (Conservation Resources for Architectural Interiors, Furniture and Training) in Beijing. CRAFT is the first formal conservation-training program in China that has been designed to meet international standards.

Catherine received an A.B. in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College. She worked for three years as a laboratory technician at the Du Pont Company performing research on heterogeneous catalysis and drug synthesis. She then held a one-year position as a laboratory analyst in the Conservation Department at Winterthur Museum before entering the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Program in Historic Preservation where she received her M.S. degree. Catherine served on the Membership Designation Working Group (2017-2021) of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.