Gwen Tauber has been a painting conservator in the Rijks Museum since 1990 and is primarily concerned with the treatment of paintings, their examination and treatment documentation. She works in the midst of an interdisciplinary team comprised of conservators, scientists and curators in the museum. Additional tasks for the conservators include caring for the collection of c. 6000 paintings, both in policymaking and individual attention according to condition and loan requests (examination, minor treatment and condition reports); examining paintings for the on-going comprehensive catalogue project and writing the technical notes on techniques and materials used by the artist; and participating in scientific research projects. Trained in the United States, she completed her conservation training in 1984 at the Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware Program for Art Conservation (MS) after receiving her Master’s degree in Art History in 1981 (BA, MA, Univ. of Mass). Before working she completed two years of internships at the Los Angeles County Museum followed by two years as an 'advanced Mellon Fellow' at het Metropolitan Museum in NYC. She then worked for three years before coming to the Netherlands: two years for a private conservator in NYC (Marco Grassi Inc.) and one year as an Associate paintings conservator in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Due to her background, her experience with challenging conservation treatments, supervision of interns and teaching at the Dutch training program (Brealey Seminar on Retouching: Philosophies/Aesthetics and Perception), Gwen has become increasingly interested in two aspects of conservation: decision-making during complex restoration treatments regarding the often precarious balance between the history of a painting and the concept of the original intent of the artist, and research into techniques and materials of artists.