Graduate Student Awards

Art Conservation

2025 Styker Memorial Award recipient Allejandra Chavez is a 2nd year Winterthur/University Delaware Program in Art Conservation graduate fellow majoring in textile conservation with a minor in preventive conservation. She is especially interested in preserving the histories, identities and lived experiences embedded in family heirlooms, textiles and garments. During the summer 2025, support from the Styker Memorial Award helped Allejandra undertake a 10-week internship at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C. From conserving a 19th-century dress owned by seamstress Lucy Lee Shirley to mounting a 1940s Air Force Women’s Army Corp uniform belonging to Ara Belle Brown, Allejandra had the opportunity to help preserve stories of resilience and identity. Allejandra’s current projects include adhesive stabilization of an 1820s silk needlework, wet cleaning of cotton candlewick dressing table cover and treatment of a reproduction 1830s Quaker morning dress (pictured above). (Image: Even Krape.)

Graduate Student Awards

The Department of Art Conservation at the University of Delaware offers several prestigious awards to recognize and support outstanding students in the field. Two notable awards are:

Rowntree Research Award: This award provides funding for undergraduate and graduate students to conduct research projects in art conservation. It aims to encourage innovative and impactful research that advances the field and contributes to the preservation of cultural heritage.
Stryker Memorial Award: This award is granted yearly to a rising second year in memory and honor of Emily Schuetz Stryker, a graduate of the WUDPAC class of 2013.

Rowntree Research Award in Contemporary Art

UD's Department of Art Conservation was pleased to present the 2025 Rowntree Research Award in Contemporary Art to Daisy Diamond (WUDPAC Class of 2026) for their participation in the Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA) Time-Based Media Workshop at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.

Current students enrolled in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation, or in UD's Preservation Studies Program, are invited to apply for the $1000 Rowntree Research Award to support attendance at conferences, or to travel to carry out research or collections-based study related to contemporary art. The annual deadline for applications is April 1.

The award complements the once-a-year Rowntree speaker on contemporary art. The award is a memorial to Joanna Rowntree (WUDPAC 1995), a promising contemporary art conservator who died of cancer in May 2006 at age 38.

Ask for the application form by writing to jhstoner@udel.edu: you will be asked for a budget along with answers to questions about the project, including a description of the proposed activity, significance of the activity to your work in contemporary art, and whether other funds will be available/solicited for the project.

Black and white photo of Joanna Rowntree

The Rowntree Research Award in Contemporary Art is a memorial to Joanna Rowntree (WUDPAC 1995).

Rowntree Research Award Recipients

Recipients of the Rowntree Research Award:

2017—Diana Hartman

2022—Daniella Villamil

2025—Daisy Diamond

Joanna Rowntree Lecturers:

2008—Deborah Butterfield

2009—Jean Shin

2010—Glenn Wharton

2011—Gwynne Ryan

2012—Yvonne Shashouha

2013—Megan Saligman

2014—Helen Ingalls

2015—Mark Golden

2016—Valerie Hagerty

2017—Christian Scheidemann

2019—Teresa Oaxaca

2021—Margaret Rose Vendryes

2022—Janey Chang

2023—Joanna Phillips

2024—Adebunmi Gbadebo

2025—Gala Porras-Kim

Emily Schuetz Stryker Memorial Award

The Emily Schuetz Stryker Memorial Award was established in 2014, in memory and in honor of Emily Schuetz Stryker, a graduate of the WUDPAC class of 2013. In the words of her classmate, “Emily was undoubtedly one of the strongest, most brilliant, and most positive forces in our class – and her inclusion in our group made us all better people, better friends, and better conservators”. Each year, as the recipient is selected, we keep these words in mind as well as the promise to do our best to select someone who shares Emily’s interests and passions: textile conservation, preventive conservation minor, Maryland, travel, and financial stability.

2024 Styker Memorial Award recipient Binh-An Nguyen is majoring in preventive conservation. What led her to pursue this major was realizing that during her first year of graduate studies the projects that she was most interested in during pre-program work were those rooted in preventive conservation. Additionally, she appreciates how preventive conservation can be a more accessible means to conservation/collections care for institutions of all sizes. This last thought plus enjoying watching Murder, She Wrote, are things Binh-An and Emily share.