About me…

My name is Bailey Kinsky and I am the owner and sole conservator of Valkyrie Conservation. In addition to my private work, I am now a full-time Book and Paper Conservator at the Minnesota Historical Society.

I graduated in 2018 from SUNY Buffalo State College (artconservation.buffalostate.edu) with an MA in Art Conservation. Even though I am a recent graduate, I have been working in the field since 2011 when I began as an intern with Panther Peak Bindery in Tucson, AZ. My internships included a summer at the University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City and a full year as the Rare Book Conservation Intern at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Since returning home to Minnesota, I worked as a Project Conservator for the Minnesota Historical Society in Saint Paul while I established my private practice.

I chose to specialize in Library and Archives conservation because of the special challenge that books present not only museum artifacts, but also functional objects found in just about every home on Earth. Interaction with books is a very physical experience- grabbing the spine off the shelf, flipping through pages, slipping in a bookmark, tossing it into backpack, using it as coaster for your mug of coffee, etc. History leaves very physical marks on books that allow us to understand a book’s lifeline. My goal in working with your book and paper artifacts is to stabilize it in such way that its lifeline is extended beyond what it was prior to my intervention while also preserving the evidence of the life your object has already lived.