Paige Strobel has a gift for making complicated things sound simple. “I feel like a nurse for the art field,” she says with a laugh. “Conservators are the doctors making the final call on treatment plans.” It’s a fitting metaphor, because, until recently, Paige actually was a nurse.

Originally from Bloomington, Indiana, Paige spent three years nursing in Chicago and another three in London, where she’d followed her now-husband, an English art photographer. She loved the work, but something was missing. “I always felt most passionate about art and art history,” she says. “I realized I wanted to do what I was most passionate about.” Art conservation, she discovered, combined her scientific aptitude with that passion—and London happened to be home to one of the world’s best programs for it, The Courtauld Institute.

Last summer, midway through her master’s degree, Paige landed her first professional conservation placement—right back in Indiana. Through a connection from the Eskenazi Museum of Art in Bloomington, she was introduced to Roxy Sperber, Clowes Conservator of Paintings at Newfields, who had a project tailor-made for a first-year student: cleaning ten panels by celebrated artist Sam Gilliam, slated for exhibition in September 2025. Her six-week internship, housed in the Newfields Scholar's Residence, was made possible through the generosity of donors Noelle and Bruce King, Judith Murphy, and Dr. Michael Shapiro.

Gilliam’s Red and Black (1981) had been in the Indianapolis Museum of Art Collection since 2008 but had never been on display. Paige’s job was to carefully remove years of dust and grime—and she embraced the challenge with the methodical enthusiasm of someone who once monitored vitals for a living. One of her favorite tools turned out to be something straight out of a kitchen: gels originally developed by chefs to make soy sauce or pineapple gels into solid forms. Conservation scientists have since adapted the technique; the gels sit on a painting’s surface and draw out dirt by capillary action. “They’re green, meaning much better for the environment; they’re less expensive, and they’re fun,” she says. “You can actually eat them—they’re just a bit bland.”

Beyond the cleaning, Paige got a rich education in Gilliam himself. She checked out library books on the artist, ran material tests with Roxy, and pored over the painting up close—discovering details that most people will never see. “Sometimes I found his hairs, part of a fingerprint,” she says. “The more time you spend with a painting, the more you appreciate it.” Gilliam, she learned, had an unconventional process: painting a canvas, cutting it up, collaging it back together, and reinforcing the back with fiberglass tape—all while the front was held with masking tape. “It defies all odds,” she marvels. “But he was such an innovator.”

The internship also brought a full-circle moment when Paige helped install Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas from the Smithsonian American Art Museum—Thomas and Gilliam had both been working artists in Washington, D.C. in the 1960s. A Smithsonian conservator arrived as a courier to condition-check the Thomas paintings, giving Paige a valuable professional connection in the bargain.

She’ll head back to London for her final two years of study, so she won’t get to see the finished result on the gallery walls. But she’s at peace with that. “We just want to be cultural caretakers,” she says. “We don’t take any credit. I’m glad I can take care of paintings now.”

Sam Gilliam’s Red and Black is on view in The Message is the Medium: Contemporary Art through late October 2026. Order tickets to see it now.