Joyce Hill Stoner recognized for advancing the field of art conservation

10:45 a.m., Oct. 29, 2003--Joyce Hill Stoner, professor of art conservation at the University of Delaware, recently was awarded the University Products “Lifetime Achievement” award for “distinguished achievement in the conservation of cultural property.” She is the ninth recipient of the award, presented by the American Institute for Conservation. University Products, an archival company, is a comprehensive resource for preservation materials.

Joyce Hill Stoner, professor of art conservation and adjunct paintings conservator at Winterthur

Stoner has taught for the University of Delaware/Winterthur Program in Art Conservation for 27 years and served as its director for 15 years from 1982-1997. The first doctoral program for art conservation in North America was founded at UD in 1990.

Both an art historian and a practicing paintings conservator, Stoner has treated paintings for many museums and private collectors. She was the senior conservator for a team that conducted a five-year project of examination and treatment of Whistler’s Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In the summer of 1998, she supervised the treatment of a 19-by-60-foot mural by N. C. Wyeth at the WSFS building in downtown Wilmington.

She coordinated the 1998 exhibition and catalogue “Picture Delaware” for the Delaware Art Museum. The museum gave cameras to a group of multicultural teenagers to photograph their personal landmarks in order to introduce them to concepts of historic preservation.

In 1976, Stoner founded the oral history project for the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation and has interviewed more than 45 major art conservation professionals internationally.

Stoner has been a visiting scholar in painting conservation at the Metropolitan Museum and at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She served as managing editor for “Art and Archaeology Technical Abstracts” for 17 years and has served on the publication’s editorial board for its sections on paintings and on training since 1987.

Stoner has authored more than 60 book chapters and articles and has recently been studying the paintings of the Wyeth family. She serves as the conservator for the Wyeth family, and Andrew Wyeth has painted her portrait.

She also has written music and lyrics for 22 musical theatre productions, including “I’ll Die If I Can’t Live Forever,” which ran Off-Broadway in 1974-75 and was called “the best mini-musical in town” by The New York Times. Five of the musicals concerned art/historical figures. In March 2002, Stoner and her collaborators presented eight performances of a musical about H. F. du Pont and the collecting of American decorative arts in honor of Winterthur’s 50th anniversary. She is now creating one-woman historical “performance pieces,” which have included the widow of an 18th-century firefighter, Whistler’s three major female models and Emily Post, with the aim of “preserving accuracy and nonfictional information while reaching out to the public with entertaining presentations about art and history.”

Stoner graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the College of William and Mary in 1968. She received her master’s degree in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University (1970), her diploma in conservation at the NYU Conservation Center (1973) and a doctoral degree in art history from UD in 1995.

Her husband, Patrick Stoner, is a nationally syndicated PBS film critic. The Stoners have two daughters and a 4-year old grandson.

Article by Beth Thomas
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