Fortunately, here in Washington we have a nearby resource, the Smithsonian’s Lunder Conservation Center, to bombard with questions. The center, on the third floor of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, has workrooms surrounded by glass where visitors can watch conservators in action, cleaning a painting or restoring folk art.

Its staff offers guidance, along with tips on what nonprofessionals can do to maintain their art and what is better left to the experts. One of the most important things to understand is the distinction among preservation, conservation and restoration:

— Preservation is a way to control agents of deterioration, such as humidity, temperature, pests, light, dust and air pollution.

— Conservation is a more involved process that includes ethics and a scientific understanding of materials. “Conservation is accepting the condition that the artwork is in ... and trying to stick to what the artists intended as much as possible,” said Amber Kerr-Allison, the center’s conservation paintings intern. Conservators study organic chemistry and art history and have had hands-on experience as an intern or apprentice. Some may have completed a graduate program in fine art conservation.

Restoration is less about a piece’s history and more about its aesthetics. It’s about making an object “look new, polished up, everything looks fine like nothing has happened to the work” if it has been damaged, Kerr-Allison said. Restorers doesn’t usually reference material science or an object’s background to the degree a conservator does.

It’s best to take care of any piece before deterioration sets in. “Damaged and deteriorated (objects) are never the same. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to completely reverse damage,” paper conservator Catherine Maynor said. So knowing how and where to set objects is essential to preventing deterioration from fast-forwarding.

At home, you can keep paper, paintings, textiles and plastic objects out of direct sunlight with filtering films or curtains to prevent fading and structural weakening. (Metals, stones, and glass and ceramics in general aren’t light-sensitive.)

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