Biography

Pamela Spitzmueller (b. 1950) is a conservator and book artist who specializes in historic book structures and materials. Her conservation career included positions at the Newberry Library and the Library of Congress before she was appointed the second ever Conservator at the University of Iowa Libraries.

Following her time at Iowa, Pam was appointed as the first James H. Needham Chief Conservator at Harvard University’s Weissman Preservation Center. In 2009, she participated in a Getty Foundation project surveying manuscripts at the Coptic Museum of Cairo, during which she performed extensive research on the Nag Hammadi codices.

Pam has led workshops at the Montefiascone School in Italy, served as Librarian for the Guild of Book Workers, and is a founding co-director of the Paper and Book Intensive. In 1988 she was asked to create an artist’s book for First Lady Hillary Clinton, which she titled ‘For Hillary.’ Pam’s artist books have been exhibited at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, National Museum of Women in the Arts in D.C., and the Center for Book Arts in New York, among others.

At Iowa, Pam held a faculty position as an associate professor in the School of Art and Art History and collaborated often with the University of Iowa Center for the Book. Pam notably led Iowa’s acquisition efforts for and treatment of William Harvey’s 1628 edition of De motu cordis, for which she presented internationally on her research regarding plant-based gossamer tissue repairs. Her findings are used to this day in Iowa’s Conservation Lab.

Pam has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant (1979), an Andrew Mellon Foundation Grant (1993), and a Kress Foundation Fellowship (1992).

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