Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute

11/13/2025

The Smithsonian is in the process of reopening our museums, research centers, and the National Zoo. For the latest updates and opening information, please visit si.edu/visit and check back regularly as information may change.

Plan your visit to the world’s largest museum complex with 21 museums and a zoo.

10/10/2025

Due to the government shutdown, MCI is temporarily closed beginning on Sunday, Oct. 12, along with Smithsonian museums, research centers, and the National Zoo. We will update our operating status as soon as the situation is resolved. We do not plan to update social media other than to inform you of changes to our operating status.

09/19/2025

We would like to congratulate former Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry Postdoctoral Fellow, Caitlin Colleary, PhD, on her new position as The Joan and Dan Holmes Family Endowed Chair of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

09/09/2025

Sanchita Balachandran, the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute’s Director, will be presenting Ancient Athenian Ceramics: Through the Eyes of a Conservator on Sunday, September 14, 2025 from 2-3pm at the Tampa Museum of Art. For more information and to RSVP, please see

Ancient Athenian Ceramics: Through the Eyes of a Conservator. This lecture re-examines Noble’s work, this time by looking through the eyes of a conservator. New perspectives from the fields of experimental archaeology, materials science and art conservation allow us to glimpse the working lives of...

09/08/2025

Different paint recipes work for different uses. Two art conservators explain how analyzing paints from the past can reveal how they were made – and how best to preserve them.

08/06/2025

07/22/2025

Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art and MCI collaborated on Beyond the Visible: Using Imaging to Study Pichwai Paintings

Believe it or not, the same technology that’s in an average digital camera can be used to uncover secrets in centuries-old paintings.

07/17/2025

On July 10, 2025, the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute and the SI Council of Conservators and Conservation Scientists welcomed more than 100 staff and scholars to the Annual SI Conservation Fellows and Interns Symposium. In-person and online audiences heard from 13 emerging professionals about work taking place across the Smithsonian’s many museums and research centers, and went on tours of MCI labs and in the collections spaces at SI’s Museum Support Center, NMAI’s Cultural Resources Center, NMNH’s Botany Greenhouses, and Smithsonian Gardens' Orchid Collection. Thank you to all of our amazing speakers and their supervisors, and to the generous support of this event by Smithsonian leadership.

07/14/2025

18-million year old mammals recently underwent a dental exam, revealing intact proteins inside their enamel that could expand our capacity to understand the history mammalian life.

Paleontologists use fossilized proteins to resolve everything from the relationships between species to how animals have adapted to changes to their environment, but like DNA, proteins degrade over time, especially in hot, arid climates, limiting the availability of these molecules to just the last few million years.

In a study co-led by a scientist here at MCI, researchers analyzed enamel samples from fossils from Kenya, which, on a geological timescale, is one of the harshest climates in the world. They found intact enamel proteins, pushing back the timescale for protein studies by about 15 million years and opening the door to a greater understanding of ancient life.

To read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09040-9

Photo: A view of the Turkwel River in Turkana, northern Kenya, where these fossils—from which ancient peptides were recovered—are found. Miocene volcanic structures can be seen in the distance: many geological features of this part of the East African Rift System, and the fossils and proteins described in this study, date to the Miocene period (23 to 5million years old). ©Daniel Green)

06/03/2025

MCI Researchers Help Recreate the World's Oldest Pigment

Jun 02 MCI Researchers Help Recreate the World’s Oldest Pigment Researchers at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute have solved the mystery of “Egyptian Blue.” Imagine walking down the street and seeing a beautiful chocolate cake in the window. Simple and elegant, it’s ganache c...

04/29/2025

03/12/2025

Free Registration! What Will the Museums of the Future Hold? by Sanchita Balachandran, Winter BearKing, and Leila Grothe. Saturday, March 22 from 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm EST at The Peale in Baltimore, MD.

The Future of Here, an ongoing exhibition at the Peale Museum, gathers and presents imaginary artifacts from the everyday life of a future people that might one day inhabit the landscape of this city. By assembling these artifacts from the trash and debris we leave behind, the exhibit raises questio...