If you ever get to watch the 2-season series of "Secrets of the Museum," I highly recommend it. It follows restorers at the Victoria & Albert Museum, as they work on stabilizing, and restoring all different kinds of items they have in their collection. It's a good way of seeing historical artifacts that you'll never get to see in person. You might be able to find some of them on YouTube:
Secrets of the Museum
They've also done a similar series on London's Natural History Museum.