WASHINGTON — With her eyes peering down a big microscope, metal tools in hand and the need for precision, it is easy to compare LaStarsha McGarity to a surgeon. Except, she is not operating on people. 

“What we do is similar to what doctors do in that we try to prevent damages. When we can’t prevent them, then we treat them,” McGarity said. 

The native of San Antonio’s East Side works in a lab at the National Gallery of Art in the nation’s capital. 

“I get to directly interact with a lot of artworks and historical objects that most people see behind glass,” she said. 

McGarity works at the National Gallery as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in object conservation. One of her current projects is restoring a collage on fabric by African-American artist Betye Sar. She described conservation as a combination of science, art and history.

“For me, it’s that objects humanize history and my goal is always to preserve that. Because it gives us a way to connect to the past in ways that sometimes text doesn’t always allow us to do,” McGarity told Spectrum News. 

With her team, McGarity has restored dozens of objects since she began the fellowship over two years ago. McGarity said while she always imagined a career in art, she thought it would be in the classroom teaching, rather than in a lab.

“All I did when I was a kid was constantly draw and write and create artworks, and so I didn’t think that I could do anything else successfully in my career that didn’t involve art,” she said. “My parents really nurtured my creativity, and it was just such a fun way to express myself and to find new ways of thinking about things, through making artworks.”

While art has been a lifelong passion, what launched McGarity’s career in Washington was studying art in Houston at Texas Southern University. There, she preserved murals on campus as part of her graduation requirement as an art major.

“It felt important that I was preserving this legacy. We’re one of the only campuses in the nation that has this as a requirement. So this is a long legacy of artworks that represent different decades, different movements within politics, different movements within world politics, are all documented on the walls at Texas Southern. So being able to be part of preserving that for the future was just something I couldn’t pass up,” she said. 

One of McGarity’s mentors, Dr. Alvia Wardlaw, director and curator of TSU’s University Museum, said she was proud.

“She’s always been a very special student in terms of her talent and her passion for art,” Wardlaw said. “She’s a person who is very comfortable in breaking barriers. She looks at it as a wonderful challenge. I think that’s part of, you know, the spirit of her personality.” 

McGarity acknowledges how African Americans are underrepresented in conservation. TSU and other historically black colleges and universities across the country have expanded efforts to strengthen the pipeline of students into museums and art-related careers. 

For Wardlaw, it has been critical to share information and inform students of such opportunities.

“It’s a field that it is so little known to so many that doing the educational part, just exposing students from HBCUs to this program can be invaluable and can really change a student’s journey in life,” Wardlaw said. “The person who has that gift is able to perpetuate into the next generation the richness of Black history. I think that is so very, very important.” 

With the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Gallery announced a multiyear undergraduate paid internship program with Howard University to establish that pathway of students from HBCUs into the museum field.

“We are confident that this program will be a major step forward in establishing a more diverse and inclusive museum field—one that truly represents our nation,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery, said in a press release.

The application period is underway and the first cohort of students will join the National Gallery in the fall of this year.

“Black culture is part of American culture, and at this time, there are not enough Black voices in the culture that we are creating, and that’s something that we can rectify, and something that we can use as restorative justice to correct historic wrongdoings,” McGarity said.

McGarity champions the mission of inclusion.

“Young people of color need to be part of conservation, because if you aren’t helping to preserve your own history, who else will?” she said.