On Oct. 25, the Art Conservation Department held its annual fall open house in Rockwell Hall. Free and open to the public, prospective students and interested onlookers alike were allowed to come and learn what the graduate program has to offer.

Buffalo State’s Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Art Conservation Department is a program founded in 1970, and one of the leading art conservation college programs in the entire country. It offers students a chance to earn a breadth of knowledge in areas such as conservation treatment, imaging, and science in their first year followed in their second year by specializing in a certain area of conservation, being objects, paintings, or paper. The program is very competitive, with only 10 students making it in every year.

Those who are able to join the program have a high likelihood of succeeding in the field, with almost every graduate becoming active conservation professionals. Third year students even take on a 12 month internship at a cultural heritage institution such as a museum or archive and learn in a professional setting. Once their course is completed, students will earn a dual award of a Master of Arts in Conservation of Art and Cultural Heritage, and a Master of Science in Conservation Science and Imaging.

At the open house event, the opportunities available within the graduate program were on full display, such as a demonstration from Dan Kushel Conservation Imaging, Technical Examination, and Documentation Lab held by Jiuan Jiuan Chen, an associate professor in the program. Held within the studio, Professor Chen demonstrated the use of UV and IR technology and its purpose in art conservation.

“So part of the job in conservation is documenting the object and its condition,” Professor Chen said. “So you have to know the condition before then after treatment which is also documented, so seeing the differences is very important.”

She then proceeded to demonstrate how they see the differences through using UV and IR technology.

“The first method in viewing these objects is seeing what is visible on the surface level. Then you can see what isn’t normally visible through UV and IR.”

Another method of analyzing what the naked eye can’t see in objects is under a microscope, as demonstrated by second year student Paola Valentin.

“So, this is basically to see what our bare eyes can’t,” said Valentin. “For example, I would have never never even noticed this blemish was here (referring to what she was analyzing under the microscope). Now if there’s anything I wanna analyze, if there’s anything I wanna sample, I can move on into this other instrumentation to see what it is. This would be like a general first step, a sort of examination. Science is a super important component to our program.”

One display that caught the eye of many in attendance was a reconstruction project done by second year student Kelsey Marino. This project was a recreation of a Jesus painting done by Andrea Solario. Marino explained why she decided to take on recreating this painting as one of her projects.

“So Andrea Solario only has around 20 surviving paintings and all of them are in Europe, and I have no access to them. But he trained under Leonardo da Vinci, who probably, as you can guess, has more literature than he does, which is excellent. So I’ve been basing this on da Vinci’s techniques and materials and practices to kind of replicate this painting. So I originally saw this piece at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and really fell in love with it. I was like, ah, I need to do that, and so for my first year in the program, we have a technology project, and so we’re encouraged to make an art or, like, try a tool or just do anything really. To try and work on something we’ve never done before, so I decided I wanted to work on this thing.”

On the third floor of Rockwell Hall, a handful of students showcased their ongoing projects for the three specializations students are able to focus on. The first was Margaret Canfield, showcasing her project in photograph conservation.

“I’m specializing in photograph conservation, so a big part of that is trying out historic processes in order to understand how the photographs were made and how they might respond to like deterioration in the future,” she said. “So for my master’s project, its a research project on three albumen photographs. As paper objects deteriorate they undergo a process called foxing, and while we kind of know how its caused it has not been fully studied. So what I’m doing is kind of a bunch of analytical and imaging techniques to try and figure out what causes foxing and where it comes from.”

The next was Katherine Miromonti, who showcased her paper conservation project.

“So, essentially, when we get into our second years, we start to specialize and I chose paper,” she said. “So I started specifically looking into like library and archive material, so I’ve got a letter written by George Washington and that’s going to be part of my thesis project. If you’ll notice its in a rough condition, but its been treated before. So someone took some Japanese paper and did a not so successful attempt at conserving the paper. Part of my treatment will be removing what was done before, attempting to reduce the tidelines, and kind of bring it back to perhaps what it looked like before it was treated in this way. So part of my research for this would include learning about paper making, the paper trade, and learning how American calligraphy has changed over the years.”

Then there was Samara-Ayvazaian Hancock, who’s project was based in book conservation.

“So there’s kind of two projects going on right now,” she said. “In one that I’m in the process of, there’s been some busts of the original materials. So I’m going in and toning paper that’s sympathetic in sort of the flex and the texture and I’m putting it in these glossaries to protect the board. Then there’s this book, its an atlas from 1796, its actually one of the first atlases of the New World. When it came in both of the boards were detached, so the most important steps was reattaching the boards to prevent any damage to the exposed text. Due to some tears on the leather I’ll also need to go back and add a material so you don’t see it as much.”

Overall, the open house provided an extensive look at the program’s offerings, many of which are unable to be shown in great depth in this article. If you wish to learn more, you can view the Buffalo State website to learn more about the program, and a YouTube video done by Buffalo Toronto Public Media showcasing the program’s offerings and a firsthand look at what goes on in the classrooms.