Mary Coughlin

Professor Coughlin is a 2005 graduate of the University of Delaware Winterthur Program in Art Conservation where she specialized in Objects Conservation and Preventive Conservation. She is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Mary Washington College with a BA in Historic Preservation. Beginning as a graduate intern in the Objects Laboratory at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Professor Coughlin has also served as a Samuel H. Kress Fellow, a Smithsonian Postgraduate Conservation Fellow, and most recently as an Objects Conservator, all at NMAH.

She also interned at English Heritage in London and the National Park Service’s Textile and Objects Laboratories in Harper’s Ferry. While at NMAH, Professor Coughlin conserved objects as diverse as FDR’s leg braces and Star War’s C-3PO. She has given conference presentation and published articles on the conservation challenges of contemporary museum collections, particularly with respect to plastic.

Professor Coughlin has taught conservation classes in the Museum Studies Program since 2006, both on campus and through our Distance Education Museum Collections Management and Care Certificate program, which she also directs. She is Chair of CCAS Faculty Advisory Committee for Online Education and serves as the Editor of the Collection Care Network of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.