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My employment in the Paintings Section of the Conservation Department of the Australian National Gallery began in June 1983, however my internship did not begin until March 1984 under the supervision of Allan Byrne. At that time, the paintings section was divided, rather arbitrarily, into: paintings pre-1940, headed by Ilse King and; paintings post-1940, headed by Allan Byrne. Because of the departure of the then senior curator of conservation Dr Nathan Stolow, Allan Byrne became acting senior curator. When Allan Byrne took up the position of lecturer in paintings conservation at C.C.A.E., Ilse King then became acting senior curator and my supervisor; the division within the painting section was then disbanded. Jac Macnaughtan departed temporarily from the department to undertake study and to work at the Tate Gallery and at the Courtauld Institute in London leaving me with the paintings section. I was fortunate enough to have at first one assistant Simon Hartas, then two assistants, Mark Henderson and Les Cormack to help with the task of backing, framing and restretching paintings. There was no formal training programme for an intern - work was undertaken as it came into the department and as it was allotted. For the sake of simplicity and ease of handling the dissertation is divided into 3 parts: Part 1 includes the Functions and Facilities of the conservation department. Part 2 includes an outline of painting conservation practice within the gallery and details of conservation work undertaken. Part 3 comprises a project on some of the properties of hardboard. As the gallery has in its collection a considerable number of paintings on hardboard, to augment my knowledge and perhaps give some insight into the nature of hardboard, this project was undertaken in conjunction with the internship.

The contents of this dissertation are a compendium of the conservation work carried out during a six-month internship period, divided between the Textile Conservation Section of the Australian National Gallery and the Conservation Division of the National Library of Australia. During a six-week period at the ANG, served under the Textile Conservator, Miss Josephine Carter, opportunity was provided to work with items from several of the Gallery's major textile collections, including: 1) Precataloguing surveys of articles of costume involving a) removal from temporary storage, sorting, documentation of holdings and repacking of over 500 items of costume from the Dialghev Ballets in the Theatre Arts Collection b) descriptive documentation and repacking of costume and accessories dated between 1900 and 1950 from the Julian Robinson Collection. 2) Assistance with the photography of 10 items of Dialghev Ballet costume and 90 lengths of Indonesian fabric for the Gallery's acquisition records. 3) Preparation for mounting, and hanging of a large Arthur Boyd tapestry in the foyer of Government House. 4) Full conservation of four small articles of costume from the Julian Robinson Collection, and preparation of treatment proposals for future conservation of three additional items. During a 41/2-month period at the National Library of Australia, served under the direction of the Principal Conservator, Mr. Ian Cook opportunity was provided to work with a wide variety of items on paper while participating in virtually all the varied aspects of the Division's work, including: 1) Conservation responsibility for a one-day exhibition held in the Library in conjunction with the ANU conference, "Australian and European Imagination", involving a) conservation and/or condition documentation of 23 bound and unbound prints, watercolours and drawings b) supervision of mounting the exhibition and return of the items to storage. 2) Conservation of four charts by William Bligh from the Maps Division for future display in the Library. 3) Treatment of 18 miscellaneous items on paper requiring conservation for their continued use in the Library, including prints and watercolours from the Pictorial Collection, playbills and bound serials from Australian Reference, and a series of Philippines maps. 4) Testing of laminating tissue and photographic negative envelopes for their suitability for conservation use. 5) Condition surveys of the Ferguson Collection of Rare Maps and of master negative microfilm reels from the Australian Joint Copying Project.

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