OUR TEAM
Daniela Leonard
Paintings Conservator and Owner
Daniela is the founder of Chicago-based Reanda Art Conservation. She is a paintings conservator, business owner, and consultant who helps collections managers, private owners, museums, galleries, and auction houses retain the quality and value of their collections. She provides thoughtful and ethical solutions with an understanding of time and budget constraints. For over a decade she has worked with institutions and private clients in the Chicago area, across the US, Europe and Asia.
Before moving into private practice, she spent five years at the Art Institute of Chicago working primarily on canvas and panel paintings for the updated Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, Arms, and Armor. She also worked at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (SRAL) in Maastricht, and at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure (OPD) in Florence, Italy.
Daniela holds a Postgraduate Degree with Honors in the Conservation of Easel Paintings from the Hamilton Kerr Institute, University of Cambridge in England (2009), and trained for one year at the Palazzo Spinelli Istituto per l’Arte e il Restauro in Florence, Italy.
David Garcia
Assistant Conservator of Paintings and Photographer
David brings constant positivity to the Reanda Art Conservation team. He is a problem solver with excellent manual dexterity allowing him to work on small details of the finest quality. Painting conservation is a vocation for him.
He has been with RAC since 2022. Previously he worked for The Conservation Center in Chicago and the Bowes Museum in Durham, UK. He worked in Graphic Design for six years, which trained him in the coordination of multiple projects, deadlines, and expectations. He also worked in commercial photography for six years doing studio operations, client services, and technical photography skills. He is RAC’s inhouse photographer. David holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from Columbus College of Art and Design, and a Masters degree in Conservation of Easel Paintings from Northumbria University.
Robert Grossman
Strategy, Operations, and FacilitIes
Rob works on the backend to keep RAC running smoothly so that the rest of the team can focus on conserving artworks. From handling facilities to admin to strategy, he wears a number of hats that have helped to shape the experience and growth of the business since 2018. He brings systems thinking, social emotional intelligence, planning, research, and execution together to make things happen.
In past roles he spent over five years building and running a not-for-profit community bicycle workshop and leading communication, programming, and facilities initiatives. He taught User Experience Design at the University of Miami, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Kansas State University. He has over a decade of experience consulting across service experience, marketing, and business design, including working on Ford’s EV rideshare partnership with Uber, where he performed client value research.
Robert holds a Masters of Design Methods from the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology and a BA in Imaging and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Zsa Zsa Olivia Helmin
Assistant Office Manager
Zsa Zsa is the friendly name, face, and voice responding to client inquiries. She maintains and organizes the office and studio areas, prepares documentation for projects, and orders supplies so that our conservators have everything they need to do their jobs to the highest standards.
She has past experience in art handling and collections management, working with galleries at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and most recently with the former Roger Brown Study Collection. She has occupied the roles of both preparator and registrar, giving her a fuller understanding of the backend support that each artwork requires when it comes through our studio.
Zsa Zsa has a Bachelors of Fine Arts with an additional focus on Arts Administration (Museum & Exhibition Studies) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.