Donatella Banti is both a Painting Conservator and a Chemist. Her main interest lies in applying scientific methods of investigation, such as spectroscopic and imaging techniques, both to study art works and to advance conservation methods.
Donatella has worked as a painting conservator for some of the major private studios in London and has acquired a keen interest and expertise in the conservation of modern and contemporary artworks, publishing on an innovative conservation treatment for Darren Almond’s Timescape 00.30 using agarose gels. She has also worked as a paintings’ conservator for the Parliamentary Art Collection and the National Trust.
She has worked in the scientific department at Tate and is currently a part-time Conservation Scientist at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Since 2023, she has been the recipient of a Daphne Jackson Fellowship at the Courtauld Institute of Art, a scheme for research reintegration . Her research project investigates the material and techniques of Polish British Artist Franciszka Themerson and aims at understanding the causes of surface degradation phenomena on her 1960’s white paintings.
Donatella has an MSc in Chemistry from the University of Pisa (Italy), a PhD in Chemistry from King’s College London, and has worked 12 years as a postdoctoral researcher, lecturer and senior lecturer in universities in Amsterdam and London before taking a break from Academia for personal and family reasons. During her break she gained a Postgraduate Diploma in the Conservation of Easel painting at the Courtauld institute of Art.
