LOS ANGELES — Art conservation is usually thought of as a specialized practice that happens behind closed doors — tucked away in museum basements or labs — not something you’d associate with pop-up events or community gatherings. But after the devastating January wildfires tore through parts of Southern California, that image is getting an inspiring shake-up through free art conservation clinics designed to help people save and restore the things they love.These clinics are the result of a collaboration between the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and a grassroots group called Art Recovery of Los Angeles (ARLA), which provides fire relief resources for safety and preservation of recovered items through demonstration videos and other digital initiatives. In partnership with heavy-hitting hosts like Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), and the Getty, plus the Conservation Association of Los Angeles (CALA), Your Neighborhood Museum, and Balboa Art Conservation Center, the effort is all about getting conservation knowledge out of the museum and into the hands of the public — especially those reeling from the loss of the Eaton and Palisades fires.Morgan Wylder, Balboa Art Conservation’s paintings conservator, discusses the cleaning and repair of a damaged painting with Altadena resident Tamir Yardenne.As an LA-based conservator who is a member of CALA and has worked on fire recovery repeatedly over the years, this effort feels like a big shift for our hyper-technical, exclusive, even mysterious profession. But as textile conservator Laleña Vellanoweth — an ARLA board member who serves as conservation and collections manager for the Department of Arts and Culture, and played a central role in organizing the clinics — explained to me at the event, the point is to flip that script by “creat[ing] a free resource to help communities save what is meaningful to them at a time when they are being told to throw things away.” Southern California is uniquely positioned to lead this kind of work. It’s not only a region where conservators regularly have to prepare for and deal with the aftermath of natural disasters — it’s also home to a dense concentration of us. Florida and the Gulf Coast regularly deal with hurricanes, and New York and Washington, DC, have at least as deep a pool of experts; but only LA has both the threats and the conservator networks to respond with these solutions.During the second clinic, which took place on April 27 on the patio of MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary, more than 140 people attended — many from hard-hit neighborhoods like Altadena and Pacific Palisades — looking for help.A conservator consults with a patron about cleaning a fabric wall hanging.The objects they brought were just as varied as the people themselves: not just paintings and sculptures, but silverware, family photos, children’s books, jewelry, and even beloved scarves and jackets. They were, as ARLA board chair and preventive conservator Margalit Schindler told me at the event, “those small but meaningful remnants of homes that are damaged or not there anymore.”At the clinic, items were first assigned a color-coded ticket based on their material type — paintings, paper, textiles, objects — then sent off to specialists for a closer look. Conservators assessed whether a simple soot clean-up would suffice or if more involved repairs were needed. Then came the cleaning stations: HEPA vacuums, brushes, special sponges, and careful, practiced hands.Conservators demonstrate how to clean a photo album.Soot sponges after use.Designed to be interactive and educational, the experience encouraged demonstrations and explanations in approachable terms. Why use bamboo skewers instead of metal picks to remove glass fused to bronze? When is a mesh screen used when vacuuming works on paper? How do turquoise beads change color in high heat, and does that become part of an object’s permanent story? These kinds of questions opened the door to deeper conversations — and empowered people to continue the work at home.Participants left with a cleaning kit as well as instructions and recommendations for safe handling of potentially toxic materials. “Now that more things are coming out about the toxic materials that are on things in the non-burn zones, [a clinic like this] is important for making sure we do things safely,” said Pasadena resident Mina Nguyen.ARLA Board Members (left to right) Madison Brockman, Laleña Vellanoweth, Margalit Schindler, Ellen Moody, and Kiernan Graves preparing the conservation corps for the arrival of the community membersThe transparency encouraged by these clinics is momentous in a field that requires years of graduate-level study, with demanding prerequisites in both art and science. But as objects conservator Jen Kim, an ARLA board member and co-founder of Your Neighborhood Museum, explained over the phone, “Many of us are now about transparency and not gatekeeping. I’m comfortable sharing ‘the secrets of the field,’ but also aware that we can’t overwhelm people with too much information when they have so many other things to do.”While it may seem like a lot to take in during a stressful time, many attendees felt quite the opposite. Again and again, I heard participants at the April event describe the experience as grounding and cathartic — appreciating the opportunity to care for their works of art when so many other aspects of recovering or rebuilding their homes were mired in bureaucratic red tape.A couple looks on as a conservator cleans the soot off their bronze Buddha, recovered from the ashes, while preserving the patina. (photo by and courtesy Andres Vasquez)“I’m feeling emotional,” paintings conservator Linnaea Saunders told me at the event. Saunders, whose studio is in Altadena, saw the clinic as an uplifting counterpoint to the devastation surrounding her neighborhood.The extent of the clinic attendees’ loss was often indicated by what they brought — paintings, textiles, and works on paper only survive if a home wasn’t completely destroyed. Still, the overall energy at the MOCA clinic was warm and uplifting. People laughed, asked questions, and shared stories. The event wasn’t just about fixing broken objects; it was about reclaiming them — finding new meaning in what was salvaged, and weaving those pieces into a continuing story of resilience and renewal.Participants left with a cleaning kit as well as instructions and recommendations for safe handling of potentially toxic materials.Conservators removing soot from ceramic objects whose surfaces were permanently altered in the Eaton fire“We go to museums and hear about paintings being restored, but we never thought anything we owned would need work like that,” said Sharon Laubach and Andrew Mishkin, scientists who work on the Mars Rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and brought beloved sculptures salvaged from the ruins of their Altadena home. “We have some other pieces that we recovered from the fire, so we’re hoping to take what we learned here and apply it to those as well.”That sentiment captures the bigger picture of the clinics, the third of which will be held on June 14 at the Getty Center. Grounded in community, the events show that conservation isn’t just for priceless works of art — it’s for the photos on your wall, your grandmother’s necklace, a kid’s first drawing.More than that, these efforts are demonstrating conservation’s role in healing individuals and entire communities. They’re rebuilding connections between people, memories, and place at a time when Los Angeles faces both mounting environmental challenges and the havoc wreaked by governmental violence and threats of deportation to so many of our community members. These clinics serve as a reminder that in a city defined by reinvention, our bonds endure, and even the most fragile things can find new life.