Awards
2004 CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation
Carol Mancusi-Ungaro
Carol Mancusi-Ungaro
The CAA/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation was initiated in 1990 for an outstanding contribution by one or more persons who, individually or jointly, have enhanced the understanding of art through the application of knowledge and experience in conservation, art history, and art. This year, Carol Mancusi-Ungaro has been selected as the recipient of this award. She has demonstrated the critical importance of collaboration between conservation research and practice and technical studies in the history of art, and has done defining research in the field for more than thirty years.
Mancusi-Ungaro is the founding director of the new Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard University Museums, as well as director of conservation at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is also a senior lecturer in the history of art and architecture at Harvard. She received her BA at Connecticut College and earned an MA in the history of art and conservation at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. In 1983, she was appointed chief conservator of the Menil Collection in Houston and directed the restoration of the Rothko Chapel paintings. She was also an advisor to the restoration of Barnett Newman’s Cathedra.
Mancusi-Ungaro has written on the techniques of twentieth-century American painters, and her extensive publishing record includes essays in Jeffrey Weiss’s Mark Rothko (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000) and Carol Mancusi-Ungaro and David Anfam’s Mark Rothko: The Chapel Commission (Houston: Menil Foundation, 1996). Her essay “Jackson Pollock: Response as Dialogue” appeared in Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel’s Jackson Pollock: New Approaches (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1999), and “A Certain Infantile Thing” is included in Eva Keller and Regula Malin’s Cy Twombly: Daros Collection (Zürich: Scalo Verlag Ac, 2002). Her perspective has illuminated the philosophical and technical complexities faced by conservators who confront modern art, particularly Abstract Expressionism, and its wide range of nontraditional materials, techniques, and generally intrinsic impermanence.
At the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, Mancusi-Ungaro oversees the Artist Documentation Project, created in concert with the Whitney to collect information from modern artists in order to preserve their works properly in the future. This important documentary endeavor, which began at the Menil Foundation, includes videotaped interviews with artists in front of their work, explaining their processes and intentions.
Mancusi-Ungaro also recognizes that a significant aspect in the complete education of the art historian, conservator, or interested humanist should include a hands-on approach. Her freshman seminar at Harvard, entitled “Materials and Method in Modern Art,” encourages students to understand the concept of artistic intention by examining actual works of art. She has generated immense personal respect through her years of professional commitment, and the successful synthesis of her ideas, interests, and skills has inspired both her students and colleagues to greater understanding.
Committee: Elizabeth Darrow, independent scholar, chair; James Coddington, Museum of Modern Art; Andrea Kirsh, independent curator and scholar; Rustin Levenson, Rustin Levenson Art Conservation Associates.
