Fiona Katherine Boyd Macalister FIIC ACR FMA FSA Scot FRSA
24th August 1956 – 4th June 2024
It is with great sadness that we note and mark the passing of our former Board member, Fiona Macalister. Fiona served as trustee of ICOM UK from 2011 to 2018. During this time, Fiona was a member of the Bursary Committee and ICOM UK’s Blue Shield representative. Her expertise in cultural emergency management were widely known and took her on many
trips abroad to help others set up emergency plans.
In her own words Fiona described herself as a “preventive and practical conservator with many years’ experience of working in national, independent and university museums, historic houses, libraries and archives”. The sense of loss on hearing of Fiona’s death on 4th June, following months of poor health, was widespread and heartfelt; testament to her influence for over 40 years across this vast institutional landscape.
Fiona wanted to be an archaeologist and conservator from a young age and her route was a BSc Joint Honours in Geological Sciences and Archaeology from University of Leeds in 1980, then University of Durham’s Postgraduate Diploma in Archaeological Conservation in 1984. Work as an archaeological conservator at excavations across the Middle East was followed by roles at Bristol Museums Service.
The new millennium saw Fiona embark on her long professional association with the National Trust. Initially Fiona was Conservator for the Trust’s Southern Region before being appointed Preventive Conservation Adviser (Technical) in 2002, a key national role focussing on Emergency Salvage, Museums Accreditation, Collections’ protection and storage and Adaptation for Climate Change. This truncated list fails however to capture the breadth of skills and knowledge Fiona helped develop and embed across the Trust. She moved on in 2008 to set up her own consultancy.
Fiona was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 2011 to research Disaster Planning. Regular commissions followed to deliver training in Emergency and Disaster Planning, Salvage & Disaster Recovery, Post-conflict Damage Assessment and Emergency
Response; clients included the British Council, Historic England, West Dean College and Harwell Document Restoration Services.
A continuum in Fiona’s life was her generosity, and professionally she widely shared her expertise in a voluntary capacity – principally with the Institute of Conservation (Icon), ICOMOS-ICORP, ICOM UK and UK Blue Shield. Fiona’s appetite for all arts and sciences guided her wider interests throughout her life, with recent reading encompassing the climate change debate, Scottish history and the poetry of R. S. Thomas. A Renaissance woman, whose optimism and hope for the future remained undimmed.
Obituary written by Clare Meredith
A list of Fiona’s publications, presentations and training delivered, as well as work for Icon and ICOM UK, is available here:
