Conservator
What the work is
Investigates, documents, treats and prevents damage to material culture to facilitate access for people to whom they hold significance.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Examines and documents objects, including condition surveys and reports
- Recommends appropriate materials and environments for storage, display and other contexts
- Researches, tests and applies treatments to stabilise, clean, repair, restore or activate objects
- Assesses and manages physical risks to cultural heritage objects and collections
- Analyses, monitors and manages storage, display and transport of material culture
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a conservation studio for objects, a weather forecasting centre and a physics laboratory. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A faded banner is stabilised and the colours come back enough to read its story
- Your forecast gives a town enough warning to prepare, and they do
- An experiment that has failed for months finally gives a clean, surprising result
Hard days
- A forecast you agonised over turns out wrong and the public remembers
- An object arrives in worse shape than anyone told you
- Months of careful work that produces a result of no change at all
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 244931, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.