Kate Seymour

Institute: SRAL – The Conservation Institute

Country: The Netherlands

Kate Seymour received a Masters of Arts in the Conservation of Easel Paintings from the University of Northumbria in 1999. After that she moved to the Netherlands to work at the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (SRAL) as a painting conservator. She is currently the Head of Education at SRAL.

Her position entails supervising the practical and research work carried out by post-graduate paintings’ students, as well as teaching and lecturing on a variety of subjects, both academic and practical for all the students at the University of Amsterdam programme for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage. She also co-organises and teaches modules at Maastricht University.

Seymour frequently travels abroad to give workshops on conservation practice and theory to mid-career conservators. In addition, she is currently a member of the ICOMCC Directory Board. She held the post of ICOM-CC Coordinator for the Working Group Sculpture, Polychromy, and Architectural Decoration (2008-2014), and Coordinator of the Education and Training in Conservation Working Group (2014-2017). She has been involved in a number of European funded projects, including IMAT and Proyecto Gacha. She currently leads the Indian Conservation Fellowship Program (ICFP) at SRAL (2013-2023).

Seymour is involved in the masterclass as expert in Mist-Lining. She contributed to the development of the technique that was invented by Jos van Och. The materials and techniques used for mist-lining were chosen to be physically compatible with wax-resin lined paintings. In 2019, she was the project coordinator and one of the lecturing team for the Conserving Canvas Mist Lining Workshops hosted at SRAL, funded by The Getty Foundation.

The lecture Seymour gave in May 2021 for the Mist-lining workshop at the SRAL is also available for the participants of the masterclass online: ‘Mist-Lining and more! Demystifying Mist-lining – the Getty Conserving Canvas workshop (2019) and lessons learnt’. The lecture is available through this subpage on our website: Lecture 16: August 2021 – Kate Seymour, Joanna Strombek and Jos van Och