AMAZING COLLEAGUES

We have been lucky to work with some amazing colleagues here at MTS. Here is a little about them.

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Laura Nealy was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, joined the US Navy at sixteen, and served in San Diego at North Island. Upon exiting the military in 1988 she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. After four years of searching for a new career, she was called to teaching. Knowing how much she hated school but loved her Home Economics courses she attended East Carolina University under Dr. Holsey, focusing on clothing and textiles. She finished with a BS in Home Economics Education in 1995 and promptly joined the staff of Fairmont High School in Robeson County, NC. She has interned for the North Carolina Historical Society and runs a business called Alamac Sacs, supplying her six-year-old daughter Rose Marie Nealy and students at Fairmont High School with various pocketbooks made of everything from juice pouches to quilted fabric. After meeting Camille Breeze (a distant cousin through marriage) and learning about Museum Textile Services, Laura's inner voice started screaming.
Mary Walter is the former curator of the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. An award-winning quilter and designer, Mary has pursued her interest in quilting craft and history across the United States and to Wales, France and Iceland where she has researched, taught and hosted workshops. She began working at the NEQM gift shop in 2005. She played a key role producing a line of reproduction fabrics based on an antique quilt from the museum's permanent collection. She is currently working on a second line. Mary attended Framingham State College and the School of the Worcester Art Museum where she studied fine arts and crafts including wood and metalworking, weaving, ceramics, drawing and painting. After earning a grant from the NEQM, Mary traveled to France to study local textiles.
Angela Pacheco is an archaeological conservator specializing in textiles and metals. She interned with Museum Textile Services for 4 months in 2006. Angela most recently was the chief of the conservation department of the Lima Museum of Fine Arts, Peru. Prior to that, she was in charge of the Pre-Columbian Textile collection at that museum, and was a textile conservator in private practice. Angela has done extensive field work in the north of Peru, and was laboratory manager and conservator for numerous archaeological projects. She has a degree from the Instituto de Conservación y Restauración Yachay Wasi in Lima, Peru. Angela interned summer of 2006 and returned for summer 2007.
Kaleigh Paré, Intern, began her involvement in the museum world at the Haverhill Historical Society's summer camps at the age of 8. She has progressed to a cataloging volunteer there as well as an intern at other museums in the area. She will graduate in 2010 from Bates College with a major in anthropology and a minor in history. She plans to attend graduate school right after Bates to become a curator to peruse her love of the past. Her interests include dolls, anything from the Tudor era, needle point, and being able to touch history and to really get involved with the past.
Colleen O’Shea, Intern - Massachusetts marks the eighth state or country where Colleen has lived, and she is so far enjoying exploring merry New England. Colleen graduated from the University of Michigan in 2007 with a BA in Russian and Eastern European Studies and Art History. She currently works in Visual Resources at a local university’s Fine Arts Department. Since she moonlights as a fiber artist, Colleen is happy to learn about textile conservation as she works toward accruing all of the necessary qualifications to get into an art conservation graduate program. Apart from textiles and all sorts of other arts and crafts, Colleen loves running on trails, hiking/backpacking on trails, finding new trails, trails in foreign lands, studying botany on trails, and trying not to get lost on all those trails. Colleen is now working full time for Brandeis University Library.
Andrew Grilz, Contract Curator, is a curator/exhibit developer from Salem, MA with almost a decade of professional museum experience. He has worked for museums and historical organizations of various sizes, and has been involved in the development and curatorial responsibilities of widely diverse exhibit themes and content. He has worked with mummies, taxidermied animals, period costume of various types, Revolutionary and Civil War artifacts, dinosaur fossils, antique weapons and scientific instruments, fine art, meteorites, and is qualified to borrow lunar samples from NASA. He is the only person in the world who has both driven Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder and held the ‘one true ring’ from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. He is co-chair of the New England Museum Association’s curators professional affinity group, and a board member of the American Association of Museums Curators’ Committee. He also serves on the CoStEP (Coordinated Statewide Emergency Preparedness) advisory panel to assist the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) concerning items and sites of cultural and historic significance.
Janice R. Williams, Contract Conservator, spent five years at the Textile Conservation Center of the American Textile History Museum before becoming a freelance preservation specialist. In addition to Museum Textile Services, Jan has contracted with Elizabeth Lahikainen and Associates, Stillwater Textile Conservation Studio, and Harvard Art. She has taught millinery at the Boston School of Fashion Design. She is also the Curator of the Haverhill Historical Society.
Halaina Demba, Knowledge Management Intern. Halaina graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Studio Art. After studying for a semester in Italy with an art restorer, she has been working towards completely the necessary requirements to apply to graduate school in Art Conservation. Halaina is now the pre-program conservation intern at the Worcester Art Museum.
Jessica Shull, Intern - Jessica comes from a background in historic dress. She studied Art History at Smith College and recently graduated from the History of Dress MA program at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Although she still does contract work for MTS, Jessie has moved to Mississippi to pursue her love of horses and museums.

Museum Textile Services
PO Box 5004
Andover, MA 01810
978-474-9200