Deborah Duerbeck Parr holds an M.S. in Art Conservation from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, where she studied the conservation of wood and paintings. Prior to that, she earned a B.A. in History with minors in Chemistry and Studio Art from Notre Dame of Maryland University. As a graduate student, she interned at the Winterthur Museum and at the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and then completed a Kress Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum. She has conducted an extensive technical study on the materials and techniques of John and Hugh Finlay, prominent makers of painted furniture in Baltimore, and has researched the causes and treatment of flaking paint and japanning on wood. At the National Air and Space Museum, Parr draws on her background in History and Material Culture while caring for the objects and paintings in the Museum's eclectic collection. 

Selected Presentations

Deconstructed to Reconstructed: The Conservation Process in the Treatment of a Sporting Screen, The National Sporting Library and Museum, Middleburg, VA, 2019.

Please Don't Sit on the Art: Issues in the Conservation of Painted Furniture, InSIGHT Symposium, Homewood House Museum, Baltimore, MD, 2011.

The Conservation of Painted Furniture, Baltimore Painted Furniture at Hampton Symposium, Historic Hampton, Inc., 1999.

Poly (2-ethyl-2 Oxazoline) as a New Conservation Adhesive: Three Case Histories, Painted Wood: History and Conservation (J. Paul Getty Trust, 1998), with R. Wolbers and M. McGinn.

Ethics in the Treatment of a Pair of Gilded and White Chairs, ICOM furniture working group, August 24, 1993.

A Preliminary Investigation of the Causes of Flaking on Japanned Wooden Objects, Conservation Science Symposium, Winterthur Museum, May 1992.