Please join us on Tuesday, September 29 at 7pm Eastern Time for the Virtual Salon, “Painting Conservation and Art Historical Practice.”

This online event is organized by Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. It is part of a series of online events cosponsored by the Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA) and the Dahesh Museum of Art.

It is free and open to the public, but registration is required: https://tinyurl.com/Conservationandart

Art historians usually inhabit the archive and library, but the conservation lab has crucially important insights to offer. Understanding the process of artworks’ creation and how they evolve as objects over time can shape, and even drastically change, the way that we interpret them. In this Virtual Salon, two eminent painting conservators will discuss the issues that guide their approaches to restoration, fruitful collaborations with colleagues across the field, and how art historians can engage with their work to enrich their own research. The panel will be moderated by Isabel L. Taube, Co-Managing Editor, and Kimberly Orcutt, Executive Editor, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.

Joyce Hill Stoner is Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Material Culture and Director of the Preservation Studies Doctoral Program, University of Delaware; and Paintings Conservator, Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation. Stoner has taught for the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation for fifty years and served as its director for fifteen years (1982–97). She studied conservation at NYU, earned a PhD in Art History focusing on James McNeill Whistler, and was senior conservator for the team treating Whistler’s Peacock Room. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Metropolitan and the Getty Museums. She has authored more than 120 book chapters and articles, founded the international conservation oral history project, was painted by Andrew Wyeth, and enjoys connecting conservators with art historians and curators.

Amber Kerr is Head Conservator and Senior Paintings Conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Lunder Conservation Center; a visible facility with floor to ceiling glass walls so the public may observe conservators at work. Kerr received her Master of Science from the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation. She is a Fellow and elected council member of the International Institute of Conservation (IIC), and a Professional Associate in the American Institute for Conservation (AIC). Kerr's experience in public engagement and outreach is extensive, with seminal publications and technical research on several artists in SAAM's collection.