UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 22, Page 1
February 29, 1996
Art conservation program receives $990,000 grant

     The Winterthur/ University of Delaware Program in Art
Conservation has been awarded grants totaling $990,000 from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation to support fellowships for master's-level
students training to be art conservators.
     The funds will provide
        * $60,000 a year for four years in fellowships,
        * $250,000 for an endowment for fellowships and
        * $500,000 as a challenge endowment to be matched two-to-one
          over a four-year period.

     "The grant is particularly welcome and much needed at this time,
due to the autumn 1995 cessation of the National Endowment for the
Arts' funding toward the training of art conservators," Joyce Hill
Stoner, program director and department chairperson, said.
     The field of art conservation encompasses the restoration of
damaged works, preservation, scientific examination, documentation of
the works themselves and description of any treatment carried out.
     The only doctoral program and one of only three master's degree
programs in art conservation in the U.S., the Winterthur/UD program
provides training in examination, treatment and preservation of
painting, sculpture, decorative and archeological materials, works of
art on paper, textiles, furniture and photographic materials.
     The program accepted its first class of students in 1974 and now
has 180 graduates practicing conservation throughout the U.S. and
abroad.
     Graduates of the master's program head the conservation
laboratories at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (textiles), the
National Museum of the American Indian (objects), the National Museum
of African Art (objects), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
(paintings), the Yale Center for British Art (paintings) and the
National Gallery of Art (sculpture).
     Two graduates are employed at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and
have treated a number of notable paintings by Rembrandt. Two other
graduates have elected to go into the treatment of natural history
materials, one of them recently treating specimens for the Mutter
Medical Museum of Philadelphia.
     The doctoral program was established in 1990, and there are seven
students now enrolled, researching topics from stone deterioration to
the techniques of abstract expressionist painters. The first doctoral
student is expected to complete his degree this year.
     For more information on the Winterthur/UD Art Conservation
program, call Stoner at 831-8092.