November 18th, 2021
Susanne Gänsicke, Senior Conservator and Head of Antiquities Conservation, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Double reed pipes, known as auloi, were popular musical instruments in the ancient Mediterranean. In 1921, archaeologists exploring the necropolis of Meroë (northern Sudan)—as part of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition—found a large collection of auloi in the pyramid of Nubian Queen Amanishakheto. Susanne Gänsicke will discuss the discovery’s importance and what it reveals about the connections between Nubia and the Mediterranean world as well as the significance of far-reaching musical traditions. She will also share recent efforts to conserve and reconstruct these ancient musical instruments. Susanne Gänsicke is Senior Conservator and Head of Antiquities Conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She holds a certificate in Archaeological Conservation (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, Germany, 1987), and was Objects Conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) (1990-2016), where she remains a project member of The Auloi from Meroë (European Research Council grant project/ Stefan Hagel of the Austrian Academy of Sciences). She worked as site conservator in Egypt and Sudan and has taught conservation at the MFA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard Extension School, the Metals Conservation Summer Institute (Higgins Armory Museum and the Metal Processing Institute at WPI, Worcester, MA), American Research Center in Egypt, and the Central Asian Museum Conservators Training Program, Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She served as Chair of the Publication Committee of the American Institute for Conservation 2005–2010, and is currently associate editor of the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation. Her research interests include materials and manufacturing techniques of ancient and historic metalwork, and the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and conservation. She is a member of CAST:ING (Copper Alloy Sculpture Techniques and history: an International iNterdisciplinary Group). In 2016, she received an Individual Grant for field work on metal preservation in Nepal (Asian Cultural Council, NY). She coauthored, with Yvonne Markowitz, Looking at Jewelry (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019).