Julie Barten joined the Guggenheim conservation staff in 1994. She has focused on both modern and contemporary paintings in the collection, including treatment of and research on important works by Robert Delaunay, Morris Louis, Robert Ryman, Brice Marden, and Antoni Tápies. She has managed conservation's role in innumerable exhibitions, helping to ensure that works exhibited at the museum are appropriately conserved and safely transported and installed. She is currently engaged in a scholarly research project regarding Picasso's Woman Ironing (1904).
Barten received a BA in art history from Yale University and both an MA in art history and a Certificate in Conservation from New York University, Institute of Fine Arts. She held an internship and a Samuel H. Kress Foundation Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, prior to her employment at the Guggenheim.