2025 Portz Scholar Award Recipient

Abstract

Works of art are more often viewed as aesthetic objects than historical documents, but they can in fact provide a unique and direct window into a past time. History, chemistry,artistry and ethics must all be considered to understand how best to bring a damaged painting back to life so that it can once again reveal its history. Throughout the Fall 2024 andSpring 2025 semesters, I partnered with the Fort Concho Museum of San Angelo to conserve two 1930s oil paintings. This thesis discusses each conservation treatment and theresearch behind it, including surface cleaning, removal of foreign material, infilling, and inpainting. It also discusses the historical context of the paintings, and why their preservationis important.

Why this research is important to me:

I began this research project out of an interest in art conservation and a desire to gain more experience in the field. After spending a summer studying painting conservation in Italy, my honors program helped connect me with the Fort Concho History Museum in West Texas to put the skills I had learned into practice and help preserve some of the paintings in their collection for future study. Not only did this project give me the opportunity to build new skills that will be extremely valuable to my goal of going to graduate school for art conservation and ultimately making a career in the field, it also taught me so much about the history of my home state and the people in it as I researched the background of the paintings. Interacting with the past and helping to bring it along into the future is an experience I will always be grateful for.