Hannah Barrett has been a Textile Conservator at the National Gallery of Australia since 2009 after graduating with an MA in Textile Conservation from the Textile Conservation Centre (TCC) then situated at the Winchester school of Art campus of the University of Southampton. Prior to a career in conservation Hannah graduated from De Montfort University in 2005 with a BA Footwear Design and worked for a year as a junior designer with Clarks. During her BA and MA studies Hannah completed a number of work placements and internships including Killerton House National Trust property (Exeter), Newark Houses Museum (Leicester), Northampton Museum and Art Gallery (Northampton) in the UK and The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. Hannah’s special interests are archaeological textiles, footwear and Islamic textiles.

The textile collection at the NGA primarily consists of Southeast Asian textiles and costume, Ballets Russes costumes, contemporary fashion pieces and fibre art. The NGA also holds a very small collection of Pre-Columbian textiles. In 2014 Hannah spent a total of 10 weeks working at the National Art Centre Tokyo installing and subsequently deinstalling the NGA’s Ballets Russes collection.