The Toxic Museum: Preserving Colonial Collections in the Ethnological Museum, Berlin and Beyond

The Toxic Museum examines the use of pesticides in German museum collections at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Helene Tello is working since 2020 as a freelance senior conservator. Starting her career in 1980 with her own conservation studio in 1983, she moved on to the Vonderau Museum in Fulda, Germany, and looked after the Indian collections at the Ethnologisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Ethnological Museum of the National Museum in Berlin), Germany, from 1998 to mid-2020. There, she encountered the topic of pesticides formerly used on objects. She conducts research on decontamination methods of such treated cultural assets as well as safe handling of them for everyone who has to deal with it. Her knowledge is spread out through numerous journal contributions, teaching activities and lectures at home and abroad.