Conservation career: Cultural conservator Heather Berry explains the important role her job plays in the conservation of artifacts | Exclusive Interview

Like Heather Berry, when she was in high school, she had “no idea” what she wanted to do with her life.

She had a few passions, but she didn’t know how to turn them into a career.

It wasn’t until she returned from a gap year teaching tourists to dive in the Seychelles that she discovered what would become a career more fulfilling than she could ever have imagined.

Before her gap year, Berry had completed an art degree at the University of Melbourne, focusing on studies of the ancient world.

When she returned to Australia, she knew she wanted to go back to university, so she started browsing the available master’s degrees.

“I just read through the descriptions of what was interesting and what appealed to me,” she tells nine.com.au

“And there is the Master of Cultural Materials Conservation.”

In short, the course offered students the opportunity to “care for ancient objects,” which sparked her interest in history.

“I did some research into what kinds of jobs people have, and I discovered that there is a whole subcategory of people who take care of shipwrecks and maritime objects, and who can dive while they do it,” she recalls.

“I read some of their papers and I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do’.”

Berry says the role of a conservator is essentially to use chemistry to care for and preserve ancient objects. The goal is to keep them in their original state as if the objects were untouched.

There are many different specialties, such as paper conservation and painting conservation, but Berry combined her passion for diving and history to become a maritime conservator.

She says that the first time she was ever entrusted with a treatment subject, she felt the pressure of being responsible for a unique ancient object.

“I didn’t sleep,” she laughs.

“They were owned by the University of Melbourne; they were from the collection there, and they knew they were giving it to students to take care of, but none of us slept that well.

“We all dreamed about the treatments we did, but of course you can’t live your whole career if you don’t sleep like that.”

She explains that there is a culture among the curatorial community of sharing your mistakes to prevent others from doing the same. 

“I’ve read some articles where people just say, ‘Hey, here’s how I broke this object. This is what I did, and this is how it messed up the object,’ so you can avoid doing that,” she says.

Today, Berry is completing her PhD on waterlogged conservation at the University of Melbourne, while also working for the Silent World Foundation, the same company she was employed by in 2019 straight after her master’s degree.

“I was incredibly lucky that a 200-year-old European-style boat was found in Sydney, but built with Australian timber, so it is the oldest boat of this type known,” she says.

“And they had someone from Britain who was learning how to properly conserve the object… and he wanted someone on the ground in Australia who could work on it as a younger emerging professional.

“So because I was the only one in my training doing maritime stuff, I got the job.”

That boat is currently known as the Barangaroo Boat, and since he worked on it, Berry has never looked back.

”I just love history, and I love the stories that the objects can tell,” she says.

“I’ve always really liked that when you look at objects in a museum and you think: ‘oh, this was part of someone’s life’. And then as a conservator I can delve into that even further if I understand the materiality of an object.

“So I don’t just understand an object and the place it had in someone’s life… I now understand that it’s this kind of rock that would probably have come from these kinds of places.”

Produced in collaboration with CareerOne.