Lee Ann Daffner

Lee Ann Daffner joined MoMA in 1998 and is responsible for the conservation and preservation of the Museum’s photographic collections, which are to be found in every curatorial department and the Library and Archives. She has worked on over 85 photography exhibitions and supervises and mentors interns and fellows in the David Booth Conservation Center and Department. Before joining MoMA, she held conservation positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harvard University, the Library of Congress, and the Better Image. She received her MA in art conservation from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.

Through research and technical analysis of photographs, Daffner promotes materials-based scholarship and the assimilation of this content in curatorial and technical art-history initiatives. From 2009 to 2015, she directed the conservation portion of the multiyear, cross-disciplinary study of the Museum’s Thomas Walther Collection of Modernist Photography and co-edited the Object:Photo print and online publications. She has contributed essays to numerous catalogues and technical articles to peer-reviewed journals. She serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation (JAIC).