Conservation projects on works of early twentieth-century American art by Ricardo Mercado and Destini Ross, MA Class of 2024.
This year, the Judith M. Lenett Memorial Fellowship was awarded to Ricardo Mercado ’24 and Destini Ross ’24, who presented their work in the conservation of American art at the Hunter Studio on May 13 to a packed house. Both students worked on objects from the first decade of the twentieth century supervised by conservators from the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.
“As someone who cares deeply about an artist’s technique and use of materials, getting to work directly in treating a work of art was very rewarding,” said Ricardo, who cleaned and devarnished a 1904 portrait of Ethel Cushing by the sitter’s spouse, Howard Gardiner Cushing, from the collection of the Newport Art Museum, and conducted research on the artist’s life and career.
Destini studied and conserved a planographic print by an unknown maker featuring “Afro-Americans who have served in the Upper and Lower Branches of the United States Congress” from the collection of the Chapin Library at Williams, which had no information about it. In addition to her critical treatment of the work, Destini discovered a comparative piece through a House of Representatives CSPAN video, which enabled an attribution to publisher Edward Elder Cooper. Cooper’s prolific career began in Indianapolis, where Destini was born and raised. Destini noted that the fellowship was “perhaps the most significant highlight of my time in the Graduate Program . . . it was a gift to have a beautiful space and time carved out each week for the careful act of art conservation.”
