Nicole Passerotti (she/her) is an objects conservator and the Director for the Mellon Opportunity for Diversity in Conservation at the UCLA/Getty Conservation Program. She has over 15 years of experience working with a wide range of collections, materials, and partners from Fine Art Museums, Artists’ Foundations, Anthropology Collections, and Tribal Cultural Centers. Her teaching experience includes UCLA graduate and extension coursework, and collection care workshops through the National Endowment for Humanities, Your Neighborhood Museum (YNM), Balboa Art Conservation Center (BACC), and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM).
Nicole is a founding member and on the current steering committee of Art Recovery Los Angeles (ARLA), a conservation collective dedicated to assisting communities dealing with disaster recovery. She has presented research and projects at national and international conferences including the American Institute of Conservation (AIC), Western Art Conservation (WACC), North American Textile Conservation (NATCC), Council for Museum Anthropology (CMA), International Symposium for Archaeometry (ISA), and Bridging the Gap: Synergies between Art History and Conservation. Her publications include a chapter on condition reporting for cultural heritage collections and co-written chapters on collaborative approaches to working with Indigenous communities and on the curation and treatment of wax sculptures. She’s the Glossary Editor for the forthcoming "Caring for Plant-Based Material Culture: A Conservation Handbook". Nicole holds an M.A. and Certificate of Advanced Study from SUNY Buffalo State and a B.A. in English from Oberlin College.