OUR TEAM

Headshot of Daniela Leonard looking at the camera smiling and wearing a brown and grown shirt and a necklace. Daniela is owner and head paintings conservator at Reanda Art Conservation based in the United States Midwest

Daniela Leonard

Owner & Head Conservator

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 artwork 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.

Headshot of David Garcia looking at camera smiling and wearing a white, blue, and green button down shirt. David is an assistant paintings conservator and head of photography with Reanda Art Conservation

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 for two and half years. 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 heads up strategy design and facilities with Chicago based Reanda Art Conservation

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.

Melissa Engel

Preprogram Intern

Melissa joined Reanda Art Conservation in Auguest of 2023 as a pre-program intern, which means she works on a lot of different tasks in the studio and in the office. She assists with examining  paintings, writing reports, conducting research, and performing conservation treatments. She is spearheading a review of our chemical safety protocols and storage, making sure we have updated safety information for each substance on hand and that all chemicals are properly organized and stored. When she is not working in the studio, you can probably find her going through conservation articles and organizing our filing cabinet.

Before RAC, she worked in elementary education as a substitute teacher, where she learned flexibility to adapt when a situation does not go as expected; which she finds frequently helpful in the studio: sometimes paintings do not respond in a usual way.

Melissa graduated with a BA from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN in May 2021 with a triple major in Chemistry, Studio Art, and Art History.