Conserving Objects, Telling Stories

As a museum objects conservator at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Annick Vuissoz isn’t used to being in the spotlight. She’s worked in any number of hidden-away places, ill-fitting spaces, even in a drafty basement. 

“People forgot we existed,” she says of her previous jobs.

But on a May afternoon at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, she was working in full view, inspecting and wrapping small pots from ancient Egypt in front of an open window as visitors peered inside and asked questions—about her job, the science behind it, and the ancient Egyptian objects she works to conserve. She enjoys the interaction with the public at the “visible lab,” which has partial walls and plexiglass windows that allow expansive views of the many conservation projects going on inside—including the preservation of the 4,000-year-old Dahshur boat.

The visible lab is the centerpiece of the museum’s The Stories We Keep exhibition, which highlights the work of conservation and how conservators preserve the stories that reach thousands of years back in time. With more than 80 items on display, the exhibition allows visitors to interact with ancient Egypt and talk to museum conservators as they restore objects in real time and in full public view.

Photo: Matt Unger

“This exhibition is an attempt to give people a little window into the work we do, the stories the objects tell, and our job as caretakers,” says Sarah Crawford, director of exhibitions and design at the museum. The exhibition, which runs until March 9, 2025, is part of a multiphase effort to reimagine the ancient Egyptian material in the museum’s care, culminating with a new Egypt on the Nile exhibition scheduled to open in 2026.

Vuissoz, who arrived at the museum in February, says part of the appeal of working as an objects conservator here was the visible lab and the interaction with the public. “It shows we exist,” she exclaims. “It’s a joke, but it’s also true.”

Engaging With ‘Artifact Doctors’

Museumgoers can watch conservators at work all day in the visible lab, a 1,900-square-foot  carpeted space with multiple tables supporting a coffin, the Dahshur boat, and other objects. There is also a large black tent in which conservators shine various lights to see defects more clearly.

At least twice a day, for half-hour intervals, conservators open a sliding window like a drive-through restaurant, allowing visitors to ask questions. Conservators also look at condition reports from the past, then reexamine the objects to update the notes.

“We are the artifact doctors,” says Gretchen Anderson, head of the Section of Conservation at the museum. Just as doctors give patients regular checkups, she says, conservators examine artifacts regularly for signs of damage.

Photo: Matt Unger

Visitors sometimes ask Vuissoz about what she does for a living. When she described her role of analyzing and applying treatments to artifacts, one visitor said, “I didn’t even know that job existed.”

For her, it’s the perfect blend of science and art. Growing up in Switzerland, she was the kid who would fix her mother’s sewing machine or broken toys. “I was a MacGyver,” she says. Conservation was a good match. “I love looking at things and connecting dots and understanding what is in front of you.”

Sarah Skinner, 26, a physics PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, looked at the visible lab with admiration during a visit on a May afternoon. “It was neat to see the people at work,” she says. But as a scientist herself, she isn’t looking to invite an audience into her lab. “I don’t think I would be able to handle a bunch of spectators as I work. … Hats off to them.”

Vuissoz admits that working in front of a live audience can sometimes be a little nerve-wracking. But the conservation team only opens the window—usually 11:30 to noon and 2 to 2:30 p.m.—for projects that can be interrupted without any harm to the conservation process. “If we are working on a treatment that is sensitive for an object, we would not do it in front of the window,” she notes.

Conservators in this exhibition believe live interaction enhances the visitor experience. Visitors often look at objects and don’t read the text on gallery labels. The live interaction, Vuissoz says, “is more spontaneous. We have more flexibility in explaining the focus of the exhibition.”

Mostafa Sherif, a conservator who specializes in ancient wood, enjoys answering questions from the public as he works on one of the most intricate and important restoration projects—the Dahshur boat. On a May day, he was treating the longest cedar plank on the boat—13 feet long—and applying nitric acid to remove the soot and absorb the salts. The boat was disassembled in 2022 as part of the restoration project.

Photo: Matt Unger

Visitors pepper him with questions when he is near the open window. One of the most common: “What was it used for?” He explains that the boat, discovered at the site of Dahshur outside of Cairo, was part of the funerary complex of the 12th Dynasty pharaoh Senwosret III.

Sherif also fields questions about the construction of the boat. He explains how the Egyptians made wooden dowels and joints to connect the planks to each other, a method that was ahead of its time and made the planks more flexible during movement.

Museumgoers have asked Sherif about his background to lead conservation efforts on such a precious artifact. Not only does he have a doctoral degree in structural conservation of historical wood from Cairo University, he worked on the preservation of two of the other funereal boats from the same excavation site in Dahshur, Egypt.

To give museumgoers live updates on the status of the boat restoration, a color-coded diagram on the outside window of the visible lab shows the planks that he has already treated and the ones that he still needs to preserve. Visitors can also view a small model of the boat displayed at the front of the visible lab.

Complicated Histories 

Like other museums across the country, the Museum of Natural History has removed human remains from public display as part of years long considerations of how to ethically and equitably care for the individuals in its care.

In the visible lab this summer, conservators worked to preserve an ornate cartonnage covering that once laid on top of a mummified person inside their coffin. This covering, which dates from the early  to mid-Roman period (around 1-200 C.E.), belonged to a man named Paheter. Paheter and his cartonnage covering will be reunited after they are conserved and cared for out of public view.

“What will you do with them?” asked Suzanne Pina, a resident of the South Hills, as she looked through the open window at the cartonnage.

“They will be put in our anthropology storage area,” Anderson answered.

Pina was impressed with the museum’s new policy of not displaying human remains. “That’s really cool. Times have changed. That’s very thoughtful.”

While most visitor feedback is positive, a few visitors can’t help but be a little disappointed that they no longer get to see mummified individuals, Haney says. They mention how they appreciate the artistic beauty of the coffins and would like to keep enjoying them. Others object to the change as “politically correct.”

Photo: Matt Unger

Vuissoz tries to get them to see the issue from a more personal perspective. “How would you feel if it were your relative?” she asks, adding that it usually prompts some additional reflection.

Conservators are currently restoring the soot-covered coffin of a man named Natjaukhonsurudj, who lived during the 25th or 26th Dynasty in ancient Egypt. Henry J. Heinz purchased the coffin as part of his personal collection and loaned it to the museum in 1898 before it was officially gifted. This coffin, which came into the museum’s care without the remains of Natjaukhonsurudj, will be part of the Egypt on the Nile exhibition. It will serve as a teaching tool to engage with visitors about the history of museum collecting practices around human remains, Haney says.

Vuissoz will work with Sherif to restore the coffin to its former splendor, a painstaking job of removing soot and preserving inscriptions and other ornate decorations   on the wood. They’ve started testing chemical cleaning treatments to see which   is most effective while remaining safe for conservators and the objects. Through cleaning, the yellows, blues, and greens of the carved people, characters, and designs will be visible. “The colors will pop,” Vuissoz says.

The exhibition also allows visitors to interact with some of the conservators’ tools, including microscopes with ultraviolet lights like conservators in the visible lab use under a large black tent to survey damage to objects.

Other Egypt Stories

Lisa Haney, Egyptolologist and assistant curator of the Egypt on the Nile exhibition, says The Stories We Keep goes beyond a traditional Egypt exhibition at most museums, which usually focus on the afterlife and religion. 

“I think it’s exciting for people to get to see that there are so many different types of stories that objects can tell,” she explains. “Stories about ancient Egyptians, stories about scholars, stories about scientific techniques and research on conservation, stories about archaeologists.”

One of her favorite displays—and a visitor favorite—tells the story of being an archaeologist in the field by making visitors piece together a broken pot.

 The puzzle appears simple. Just five pieces. But unlike a flat jigsaw puzzle, this one is 3D with jagged edges, its magnetized terra-cotta pieces coming together to form a realistic facsimile of an Egyptian clay pot.

“I think it’s exciting for people to get to see that there are so many different types of stories that objects can tell. Stories about ancient Egyptians, stories about scholars, stories about scientific techniques and research on conservation, stories about archeologists.“

Lisa Haney, Egyptolologist and assistant curator of the Egypt on the Nile exhibition

 Skinner, the physics PhD student, is used to solving complex problems with computer simulations. But to solve this problem she used her hands, taking the magnetized pieces from a basket and piecing them together. The puzzle was created by a 3D scan and a printout of the original pot, which was excavated on an archaeological dig and sits nearby in a display case, safe from human hands. The ceramic pot, made from a wheel, is from the Middle Kingdom era and was conserved in the 1990s.

Like most people, Skinner had to try multiple times before succeeding at the puzzle. “It was harder than it looked,” she remarks.

Haney says the pot puzzle captures some of the thrill she and her colleagues have experienced by finding sherds of an item on a dig, taking them back to the dig house, and discovering how they fit together.

“It’s really fun,” Haney says. “The puzzle gives you that experience. It has all the same cracks” as the original artifact.

Photo: Matt Unger

Crawford says the exhibition ties objects to people so visitors hopefully will be more sensitive to the real lives behind the stories. One of her favorite displays compares objects from ancient Egypt to their counterparts today. It includes a bronze bracelet worn by a child in Egypt that is paired with a white plastic hospital bracelet worn by Crawford’s own newborn daughter. By drawing connections between ancient objects and the people who owned them, museum visitors may start to view mummified human remains in a new light, she notes.

Another popular exhibition is the “fake cat”—the ancient equivalent of internet scammers.

Cats were revered in ancient Egypt and sometimes mummified as an offering to the gods. But this “cat mummy” is actually a fake. An X-ray shows there is no feline inside. Items like this would have been sold to people visiting Egyptian temples. Sometimes they would contain remains, and sometimes they wouldn’t. “There were people making money on this back then,” Anderson says.

One interactive exhibit provides small pieces of paper so that visitors can write their own object stories and post them on the wall. People write how certain objects tell stories about their lives—anything from a family heirloom to a current purchase. It’s just one more way to coax visitors to look at artifacts, both ancient and modern, in a different way, Crawford says.

“We’re stewards and we hold the objects in public trust,” she says. “These items were brought from around the world to Pittsburgh. So, part of our duty is to talk to the local public about these stories.”