MCI Paintings Conservator Dawn V. Rogala was recently invited to the University of Texas at Austin, where she presented the Mary Saunders Leech Lecture in Fine Arts and led a Mellon Foundation Professional Development Seminar as part of a two-day event entitled “Conversations in Conservation: Old Master Paintings in the Blanton Museum of Art.” During the event—a collaboration between the university and the university museum—Dr. Rogala consulted with museum curators and doctoral research fellows on paintings from the Blanton Museum of Art’s Old Master and Modern and Contemporary collections, gave a presentation on visual assessment skills for art historians, and led art history graduate students in a seminar practicum during which they applied these skills to the assessment of works from the museum collection. The event concluded with a research summary presentation by event organizer Hannah W. Wong, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Prints and Drawings, and European Paintings at the Blanton Museum of Art. (Image: Dr. Rogala—second from right at table—leads students from the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Art and Art History in reviewing works from the museum collection in the conservation laboratory of the university’s Blanton Museum of Art.)
