Debora Mayer knows how to find hidden things, like using ultraviolet light to reveal that a “copy” of the Magna Carta from the year 1300 is in fact an original document. As the conservator for analytical services and technical imaging at the Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library at Harvard University, the UD alumna helped researchers from Harvard and King’s College in London with the discovery that made headlines this spring.

But before Mayer could take part in exciting discoveries, she had to find her own career path, which she did with the help of the University of Delaware Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation (WUDPAC).

One phone call

Mayer didn’t know what she was looking for when she finished her undergraduate degree, but a phone call to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) changed her life. 

“I cold-called the museum and asked, ‘What do you do for your paintings?’ and the operator put me through to the conservation department. ‘Conservation Department?’ I thought. I’ve never heard of that. What is that?” she said.

Mayer’s education up to that point had been broad and exploratory: an alternative high school, a year studying in Jerusalem, a handful of art schools. After earning an art degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, she worked as a fine arts master printer and learned how to mat and frame artwork. She even considered following her father’s footsteps in the sciences or pursuing a career in the medical field. 

She didn’t know there was a field that combines her love of both art and science until that phone call and a visit with the SFMOMA conservation department, where she saw people surrounded by art, working with their hands and using their scientific knowledge.

“The world just opened up for me,” she said. “It was the most amazing afternoon of my entire life because I saw everything that I like in my world happening in one room.”

From curiosity to career

The conservation staff at SFMOMA continued to mentor Mayer, walking her through the steps she needed to take to enter the field, including pointing her to WUDPAC in the College of Arts and Sciences.

She entered the program in 1979, beginning an enduring connection with UD. 

Debra Hess Norris, chair of the Department of Art Conservation, noted: “I have known and admired Debora since she was a graduate student, and beyond her technical brilliance, she is a beloved and respected instructor. She has inspired generations of conservation professionals who candidly reflect on her extraordinary and compassionate teaching in fiber microscopy and analysis.”

Mayer loved the educational and research aspects of the WUDPAC program, and she returned to the Winterthur Museum and WUDPAC as a paper conservator and an educator a few years after finishing the program in 1982. 

Although now at Harvard, she still returns to Delaware at least once a year to help teach and prepare the next generation of conservators

“I keep coming back because I learn as much as the students do because of the questions they ask. They make me rethink what I know and find new ways to explain things,” she said. 

A magnificent discovery