Eleanor McMillan

Eleanor McMillan, Conservator, died on July 21st in Towson, MD. She was 83. Born in Baltimore, Ms. McMillan grew up on "Sunny Hill Farm" in Glyndon, MD. She received her B.A. from Radcliffe College, in Cambridge, MA, in 1960 and attended the Art Student League in New York from 1960 to 1963. After serving as an intern at the Walters Art Gallery in 1962, she was hired by the Smithsonian Institution just as they were setting up a new conservation laboratory. From 1963-1994, Ms. McMillan oversaw projects at the Conservation Analytical Laboratory and helped coordinate educational and training programs, eventually becoming the laboratory's first paper conservator. In 1969 she was sent to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence for four months to aid in the restoration of flood-damaged books, documents, and prints. Ms. McMillan's interest in promoting good conservation led her to help inaugurate the Washington Conservation Guild in 1967, to serve on the boards of the American Institute for Conservation and the International Institute for Conservation, and to provide initial funding for the Smithsonian Center for Archives Conservation. She also proposed and funded the Walter Art Museum's "Conservation Window," which opened in 2009 and offers museum visitors the opportunity to watch and interact with conservators as they treat objects from the collection. In addition to conservation and art, Ms. McMillan loved travel and scuba diving and cared deeply about wildlife conservation. She is survived by her brother, William McMillan, Jr. and two nieces, Virginia Hull and Eleanor Clark. Services will be private. Her family asks that in lieu of flowers, possible donations be made to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (https://www.aspca.org).