The new curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is...a dog!

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts has just hired its new conservator-and it’s a dog! Riley is a 12-week-old Weimaraner puppy who is part of an experiment that, if successful, will be carried out at other institutions as well: using a dog to ferret out moths and other pests that could be harmful to the wood and canvas of artworks stored in museums.

Riley has, in fact, been specially trained to identify the presence of these “intruders” and, of course, will be “on duty” during closing hours. Actually, the Boston museum has other methods of averting the problem, but, as explained by Katie Getchell, deputy director of the museum, Riley can “be trained to sit in front of an object and smell something that we can’t hear or see, so we can pick up the object, investigate it, and see what’s wrong. This is very important for preserving museum objects.”

As mentioned above, if the experiment works, other museums will join the initiative, starting with the prestigious University of Pennsylvania, which has already joined the K-9 Artifact Finders project, developed by Red Arch Cultural Heritage Law & Policy Research, which uses dogs to unmask art dealers.

The new curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is...a dog!

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