Kathleen Froyen

The conservator Kathleen Froyen has been working full-time on The Ghent Altarpiece since 2018. She coordinates the conservation studio at the Museum of Fine Arts and sits on many steering committees and advisory committees, but most of all, she enjoys getting behind the microscope herself to do some real work: the conservation of Van Eyck's magnum opus.

Kathleen Froyen, restorer of the Mystic Lamb, poses in front of some paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent

  • The conservation in three details

    The Ghent Altarpiece has been reborn in the past decade. The conservation campaign gradually revealed that the original had been heavily overpainted – to the extent that the hand of Van Eyck was sometimes hard to find. Perhaps the best way to illustrate our work is by giving a few examples.
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    Restorer Kathleen Froyen in front of the studio in the MSK in Ghent

  • Life as it is: the conservation of The Ghent Altarpiece

    Hardly anyone can develop as intense a relationship with The Ghent Altarpiece as we conservators. There we are, working face to face with Van Eyck, right down to each individual brush stroke. That captures your imagination, of course. People often ask me questions about what that feels like and what our working day is like. The answers are below!
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    Kathleen Froyen in een zaal van haar werkplek, het Gentse Museum voor Schone Kunsten

  • Revealing Van Eyck, six centuries later

    Conservation is a wonderful profession because it combines so many things: art history and science, tangibility and chemistry. Thanks to today's technology, we are revealing The Ghent Altarpiece as it originally appeared in the 15th century – and that's a magical experience when you experience it right up close.
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    One of the restorers of the Ghent Altarpiece poses in front of the empty frames of the upper register of the Ghent Altarpiece