I am pleased to announce the arrival of a new staff member at the Museum Conservation Institute: Dr. Dawn V. Rogala. Dawn will be working on a special project to organize and create an archive of materials, research, and equipment used by Dr. Marion Mecklenburg during his decades of research at MCI. Marion studied the mechanical behavior of art materials, with resulting discoveries that had—and continue to have—a direct impact on the preventive and treatment efforts of collections professionals around the globe. The planned Mecklenburg Materials Archive will not only house the wood, fabric, and paint samples prepared and studied by Dr. Mecklenburg, but will also provide researchers with access to the raw materials (such as custom-made paints) from which those samples were created.

 

Dawn V. Rogala is a Paintings Conservator at the Museum Conservation Institute (MCI). Dawn received an M.A./C.A.S. in Art Conservation from Buffalo State College/State University of New York (2006) with a specialization in paintings conservation, and a Ph.D. in preservation studies from the University of Delaware (2014). Dawn has studied and treated paintings from numerous regions and eras, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary art. Dawn’s doctoral research focused on identifying the late-career palette of Abstract Expressionist painter Hans Hofmann and examining relationships among those materials, the artist’s signature painting style, and the physical and aging characteristics of his paintings. A book on her Hofmann research is due to be published by the Getty Conservation Institute in 2015. In addition to a Conservation of Museum Collections Fellowship studying ground layers in the mid-20^th century collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and a postgraduate fellowship at MCI, Dawn has held intern, fellow, or staff positions at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven), the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford), the Stichting Restauratie Atelier Limburg (Maastricht), and Page Conservation (Washington DC).  Dawn can be reached at 301-238-1255 and [log in to unmask].

 

 

Dr. Robert J. Koestler

Director

Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute

4210 Silver Hill Road

Suitland, MD 20746-2863

 

Tel: 301-238-1205

Fax: 301-238-3709

E-mail:  [log in to unmask]

Web: www.si.edu/mci