The treatment of the painting collection is supervised by conservator Norman Muller in the Museum’s conservation studio. The conservation needs of the Departments of Prints and Drawings, Photography, Ancient art, and Asian art are performed by private conservators with specialized expertise, working under the guidance of the Museum conservator. Every other year the conservator offers a course on the history of Western painting materials and techniques to undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Art and Archaeology. Interns are accepted periodically from recognized conservation training programs.  Support for conservation projects has been provided through grants from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The conservation studio was made possible by a generous gift from the Robert Wood Johnson Jr. Charitable Trust. Volume 59 (2000) of the Museum's journal, Record of the Princeton University Art Museum, is devoted to the conservation program at Princeton.

The Making of a Masterpiece: Nosadella's Annunciation provides a rare opportunity to study the work of Nosadell, the little known Bolognese painter. Technical analysis of his Annunication reveals the artist's struggle to resolve the design, from preliminary sketches on paper to final touches of oil paint on panel.

Recapturing the Image, a Web site produced by the Museum, describes how Andrea di Bartolo, a fourteenth-century Sienese artist, created his Madonna and Child (ca. 1410-15), the central panel of a dispersed altarpiece.