The Trustees

Francis Plowden

Francis Plowden, secretary and treasurer, is a chartered accountant who holds a number of Board positions in the voluntary and private sectors. He also works as an advisor in the museums and built heritage sectors.

Penelope Plowden

Penelope Plowden worked for The Economist Intelligence Unit for many years and now works as a freelance editorial and economic consultant. She also sits on the committees of several local charities in south London.

Nell Hoare

Nell Hoare MBE has been Director of the Textile Conservation Centre (now part of the University of Southampton) since 1992 and is now also Deputy Head of the Winchester School of Art.

She was previously Assistant Director of the Area Museums Service for SE England. Nell is a member of the Heritage Lottery Fund's Expert panel on Museums, Libraries and Archives and a Trustee of the Leather Conservation Centre, the Daphne Bullard Trust and the Kathy Callow Trust.

David Saunders

is head of the Department of Conservation, Documentation and Science at the British Museum. He worked for twenty years in the Scientific Department at the National Gallery in London. His background and research interests are in the scientific examination of artefacts, studies of the deterioration of material (particularly pigments) and in preventive conservation. He is on the project team for the new collections management centre to be built at the Museum. Outside the Museum, he is a member of the Web project and Merlin steering groups. He is a Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation (IIC), and Director of Publications and Council member for IIC, and editor of Studies in Conservation.

Sue Palmer

Sue Palmer is international marketing communications director of Grant Thornton and a Trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund. She was formerly a member of the Museums and Galleries Commission Conservation Unit Advisory panel and of the Executive Committee of the Textile Conservation Centre and has worked with a number of arts and heritage charities.

Jane Mcausland

is a conservator and restorer of art on paper. She has had her own private practice, based in Suffolk, since 1970. With others, she founded the Institute of Paper Conservation in 1976. In 1977 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship. Over the next two years she worked on the collection of HM the Queen in Windsor Castle, particularly the Holbein drawings. She has been a member of the Council of the International Institute for Conservation of Artistic and Historic Works and the editor of Paper Conservation News. She advises Christie’s, Sotheby’s, the Henry Moore Foundation and has many contacts world-wide.

David Leigh

David Leigh is Policy Adviser for ICON (the Institute of Conservation) and Secretary-General of the International Institute of Conservation. He has been Executive Director of the UK Institute of Conservation and, before that, Principal of West Dean College, where he helped to enlarge the scope of conservation programmes. He began his career as a conservator and lecturer; he established the Conservation Unit of the (then) Museums and Galleries Commission, before running the Museums Training Institute.