Science and art are often thought of as
opposites, yet a love for both can be
combined into one profoundly
interdisciplinary field. With its seemingly
disparate blend of art history, studio crafts,
and science, art conservation involves the
scientific treatment and preservation of the
artworks and artifacts that make up our
cultural heritage.
Brian Baade and Kristin de Ghetaldi examine a historical reconstruction of "Saint Veronica and Verso" by Hans Memling, created by Baade through funding from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for educational reconstructions of three Kress paintings in the National Gallery of Art. [Photo by Kathy Atkinson]
One of only five graduate conservation
programs in North America, the Winterthur-UD Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) has been preparing the field's
experts for over thirty years. Its graduates
have been responsible for the scientific
analysis and preservation of objects ranging
from documents like the Emancipation
Proclamation and the Treaty of Paris; to
artworks by Rembrandt, Van Gogh and
the Wyeths; to artifacts like the 1905
Wright Flyer III and the original R2D2
from Star Wars.
A marriage of art and science
"UD's interdisciplinary program in art
conservation is one of the finest in the world,
training students to become professionals in
museums or in private practice," said Brian
Baade, an instructor and researcher of
historic painting materials and techniques at
UD. "The Winterthur-UD program is a true
marriage of art history, hand-skills like
studio art, and science, especially chemistry.
Students must have a strong background in
all three disciplines for admission to the
program, before continuing with even more
intensive theory and practice in those
subjects," said Baade, a 2006 WUDPAC
graduate.
UD's doctoral level preservation studies
program (PSP) was established more
recently, and like WUDPAC, enjoys unique
collaborations among a wide variety of UD
programs and departments, combining
studies in anthropology, art conservation, art
history, biology, material culture studies,
chemistry, materials science, urban affairs
and more. Current doctoral students'
fieldwork crosses both cultural and
disciplinary lines, from researching
preservation methods for outdoor murals
from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, to
examining the reconstruction of buildings
and whole towns in the USSR following
World War II.
De Ghetaldi has already begun
communicating with researchers in UD's
chemistry department to plan how she can
best take advantage of that department's
advanced analytical equipment and
expertise to examine the microscopic
samples of paintings involved in her
research. "I knew I wanted that
interdisciplinary interaction and
collaboration for my studies, because you
get the best research when you can get art
historians, conservators and scientists all
working together."
New class includes technical examination of artworks
Baade has just begun teaching a new class
developed with UD's new art history
curatorial Ph.D. program in mind. Decoding the Old Masters is a
graduate level course focusing on all the
technical matters pertaining to an artwork.
like materials, techniques and
deterioration, and what that technical
information can reveal, like the condition or
the provenance of the piece.
As a Mellon Fellow at the National Gallery
of Art, de Ghetaldi had the opportunity to
interact with many curators in her
conservation work on the treatment of Old
Master easel paintings. With their traditional
education as art historians, most of the
curators had relatively little background in
how to examine and understand the material
aspects of artworks in their own institutions,
but they were hungry to learn.
UD a leader in cross-disciplinary collaboration
With few exceptions, hands-on
examination of the methods and materials
of artworks has not traditionally been a
part of art history graduate studies, said
Baade and de Ghetaldi, but that's changing.
The National Gallery experience
crystallized for de Ghetaldi the continuing
need for greater cross collaboration and
interdisciplinary study in the once
divergent fields. "While a number of
colleges and universities have recently
started to adopt a more interdisciplinary
educational approach," observed de
Ghetaldi, "the University of Delaware is at
the forefront of this trend."
The new Decoding the Masters course has
art history graduate students making some
of their own pigments and painting with
egg tempera, all with the goal of learning
more about the physical properties of the
artworks they're studying. Explained de
Ghetaldi, "As these young art historians
begin to apply for museum curatorial
positions, their added background in
technical art history combined with hands on
experience will make them uniquely
qualified."
