Respected art conservator and administrator Susan Sayre Batton is the new deputy director of the Hono-lulu Academy of Arts.

Replacing Carol Fox, who took a position at the East-West Center, Batton closed her private practice in Los Angeles to return to Honolulu. She has a long working history with the academy, most recently raising the profile, as a consultant, of the James A. Michener Collection of woodblock prints.

Batton originally joined the academy staff in 1992, when she spent two years designing the museum's program to survey, conserve and develop exhibition standards for the Michener collection.

Her long list of prestigious arts assignments include consulting conservator for the Art Institute of Chicago (when academy director Stephen Little was the Pritzker Curator of Asian Art) and acting head of conservation at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum.

Museum goers can see Batton's handiwork at the academy exhibition "Into the Light: The Shifting Palatte in Edo- and Meiji-Period Ukiyo-e Prints," which she curated.