Worldwide opportunities for art conservation students

Mary Coughlin, plans to work with a conservation team at English Heritage, headquartered in London, focusing on the care and maintenance of historic properties and the effect of dust on collections.

Sheila Payaqui will work on the conservation of contemporary aboriginal art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia.

Anya Shutov will spend her third year in the paintings conservation laboratory at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Tina Wasson will learn about new laser cleaning systems for stone objects, three-dimensional laser scanning and other treatment methods at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside in Liverpool, England.

4:39 p.m., May 18, 2004--Five art conservation graduate students will be globe trotting this summer from Bulgaria to Australia, sharing their expertise and learning new methods of art conservation in a variety of venues, thanks to a Samuel H. Kress Foundation grant. The Kress Foundation supports the history, conservation and enjoyment of European art, architecture and archaeology from antiquity to the 19th century.

Debra Hess Norris, chairperson of the Department of Art Conservation, said that students are “dynamic ambassadors and will represent our program and American conservation exceedingly well. We are grateful to the Kress Foundation for their generous support and are excited by the enriching educational opportunities that these international study projects will provide.”

Students supported by the grant are

Mary Coughlin, who received her bachelor’s degree in historic preservation from Mary Washington College, plans to work with a conservation team at English Heritage, headquartered in London, focusing on the care and maintenance of historic properties and the effect of dust on collections. Previously, she worked as a conservation technician at the National Museum of the American Indian and as an intern at George Washington’s Ferry Farm in Virginia. Last summer, she worked for the National Park Service at Harpers Ferry. All third-year students serve as interns during their final year in the program, and Coughlin will be at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Karl Knauer, a graduate of Case Western Reserve University who worked with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, is interested in the treatment of waterlogged material and X-rays of excavated metalwork from the Roman, medieval and Viking periods. He plans to specialize in the preservation of archeological material and is assigned to the York Archeological Trust in England. Next fall, he will begin his internship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Sheila Payaqui, who holds a degree in studio art from the University of California at Santa Cruz, is heading Down Under to work on the conservation of contemporary aboriginal art at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia. An object laboratory technician at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Payaqui participated in a wide range of conservation activities, such as maintenance of the outdoor sculpture collection, and X-rays of more than 30 wax sculptures by Edgar Degas. In January 2002, she worked with a conservation team in Chile, documenting and conserving religious sculpture in rural churches. She will intern at Harpers Ferry Center, National Park Service.

Anya Shutov, who received her bachelor’s degree in art history and chemistry from UD in 2002, was born in Russia, coming to this country at the age of 12. Shutov was an intern at the Painting Conservation Laboratory in Moscow during the summer of 2001, and the Swiss Institute for Art Research last summer. With an interest in the restoration of older paintings, particularly icons, she plans to spend the summer in Bulgaria working in this field. She will spend her third year in the paintings conservation laboratory at the Yale University Art Gallery.

Tina Wasson, a graduate of the University of Texas, plans to work in object and sculpture conservation, learning about new laser cleaning systems for stone objects, three-dimensional laser scanning and other treatment methods, at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside in Liverpool, England. She also will have an opportunity to visit other European conservation laboratories. She has served as a conservation assistant at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art and in private practice. This fall, she will intern at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Mo.

Other students in the program are going overseas this summer as well. Brian Baade and Natasha Loeblich have received grants from the Annette Kadae Charitable Trust to work on decorative art conservation projects, such as the preservation of painted furniture and architectural surfaces, in a chateau in central France and will have opportunities to travel in Europe afterward to visit other sites. Kate Cuffari has been accepted into an archeological dig, sponsored by Harvard and Cornell universities, in the ancient city in Sardis, Turkey.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photos courtesy of Lazlo Bodo

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