Art conservation department
receives $1.8 million in grants

The University of Delaware Department of Art Conservation recently received major grants totaling $1.8 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Annette Kade Charitable Trust and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for support of graduate student stipends, curriculum evaluation and development, research and international travel.

According to Debra Hess Norris, acting chair and director of the Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC) a grant for a $1 million endowment that must be matched on a one-to-one basis, along with an additional expendable award of $300,000. Once matched, the Mellon grant will allow the master's degree-level student fellowship stipends to be raised to more competitive levels. The funds also will provide better opportunities for the study of preventive conservation, digital imaging and the preservation challenges associated with emerging technologies and electronic media, as well as faculty exchanges with other U.S. graduate training programs in art conservation.

Due in part to past cooperative efforts with the Getty Conservation Institute, UD's program is a leader in training and awareness in preventive conservation, Norris said, which includes such issues as climate and pest control, disaster preparedness and emergency response.

In addition, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded UD an endowment challenge grant of $450,000, which must be matched on a three-to-one basis over the next three years. One of only 26 NEH challenge grants awarded nationally, this grant too will help to increase graduate student stipends and also will support minority recruitment, public lectures, guest speakers, management seminars and research and travel related to ethnographic and archeological conservation.

Thomas M. DiLorenzo, dean of the College of Arts and Science, said the receipt of these two major awards affirms the national and international reputation that the Winterthur/ UD Program has attained and, at the same time, strengthens future efforts. He noted that these large endowment grants will enable the increase of stipends to more competitive levels while also stabilizing long-term funding for such fellowships.

The third grant–$40,000 from the Annette Kade Charitable Trust–is earmarked to support student research and travel in France and Germany and will allow the department to bring French and German conservators to Delaware. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation award of $19,000 will cover the cost of six student conservation projects this summer in Great Britain, Austria and Singapore. (Funding received last year from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation promotes similar experiences in the preservation of Asian art.)

Norris said that travel abroad to learn conservation techniques and to see foreign works of art and history in their original settings has been a desired facet of the master's degree-level program since its inception, and these operational and endowment grants insure that such projects can now be realized on a more regular basis.

Many of the more than 200 conservators who have graduated from UD's conservation program since it began in 1974 have taken leadership roles in preservation projects significant to the humanities.

Suzanne Thomassen-Krauss is heading the $18-million project to preserve the Star Spangled Banner;

Marian Kaminitz is director of conservation at the National Museum of the American Indian, where her work with Native Americans has focused on the traditional care of their art and artifacts;

Brenda Bernier, conservator at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, works closely with Holocaust survivors to preserve drawings, diaries, documents, photographic albums and scrapbooks; and

Current students are examining and treating an Egyptian mummy for the College of Holy Cross.

The WUDPAC program, Norris said, receives more than 700 inquiries a year for the 10 spaces in its three-year master's degree program. Prerequisites include a "triple major" in studio art, chemistry and art history or archeology, in addition to at least 400 hours of practical experience supervised by a professional conservator.

Norris said she is particularly pleased that, with this influx of grant funds, the program will provide more competitive and equitable fellowship support for the high-caliber, talented and skilled applicants it continues to attract, while also adding funds to further develop and enhance the curriculum.