Project Teams

The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879 as both a museum and school, opened on its present site at Michigan Avenue and Adams Street in 1893. The museum originally housed a collection of plaster casts and had a visionary purpose to acquire and exhibit art of all kinds and to conduct programs of education. The collection now encompasses more than 5,000 years of human expression from cultures around the world, and the school's graduate program is continually ranked as one of the best in the country. Within the next decade, a new wing designed by renowned architect Renzo Piano will continue this process of growth.

The Institute has a large and diverse collection of artworks spanning many periods, styles, cultures, and media. One of its primary institutional goals is to preserve these works of art so as to maintain their physical integrity, aesthetic beauty, and historical significance. Through an ongoing program of research, preventive care, documentation, and selective treatment the museum seeks to gain a better understanding of these works of art and to preserve them for future generations.

To care for this large and varied collection the museum has established seven separate conservation facilities designed and equipped to serve the treatment and collections care needs of different classes of materials. Each facility is staffed by conservators and technicians with specialized knowledge. The Department of Painting’s Conservation was established in 1956, and between 1972 and 1985 six additional laboratories were established for the care of works on paper, photographs, textiles, three-dimensional objects, period frames and books. In 2003 a state of the art Conservation Science facility was established, focusing on conducting analyses of works of art, studying their structural and chemical nature to investigate and characterize their constituent materials, both organic and inorganic. The scientific research is carried out in collaboration with a curatorial staff that is amongst the most respected in the world. As art historians responsible for the study, presentation and management of the collection their scholarly expertise includes American and European paintings, sculpture and decorative arts, Asian art, African and Amerindian art, architecture and design, textiles, prints, drawings, photographs and contemporary art.

Francesca Casadio
Francesca Casadio joined the Art Institute of Chicago as its first A.W. Mellon Conservation Scientist in July 2003, filling a critical role in establishing and directing a conservation science program. Her primary activities focus on equipping an in-house laboratory with state-of-the-art instrumentation, and conducting analyses of works of art in the collections. Francesca Casadio received her Ph.D. (2001) and M.S. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Milan, Italy with dissertation on the analytical investigation of synthetic polymers used in conservation of works of art and architecture and masters’ thesis focused on applications of Micro-Raman and FTIR spectroscopies to the investigation of pigments in polychrome works of art. Prior to her appointment to the Art Institute of Chicago, Dr. Casadio was research fellow in the Science Department at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, then at the ICVBC - CNR (Italian National Council of Research) "Gino Bozza" in Milano. Dr. Casadio has published on numerous topics in the conservation science field, dealing with both movable and immovable Cultural Heritage. Her research interests are: application and development of analytical methods to the study of works of art, vibrational spectroscopies, pigments, stone materials; polymers for preservation of Cultural Heritage. Contact: fcasadio@artic.edu

Elinor Pearlstein
Elinor Pearlstein (B.A., Vassar College; M.A. University of Michigan) has served as Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Art Institute of Chicago since 1987, following ten years at the Cleveland Museum of Art. In attempting to integrate technical, historical, and stylistic studies of these collections, she has worked closely with archaeologists, metallurgists, geologists, and other specialists in materials science in this country and in China. Her recent research has focused on the Art Institute's extensive collection of ancient Chinese jade.

A pioneer in recognizing the importance of studying the science and technology of all materials, not just metals, Northwestern University, founded in 1851, is home to the first materials science academic department in the world. The Department of Materials Science and Engineering began in the 1950s when a group of faculty realized that the fields of metallurgy, ceramics, and polymers could be merged and studied as a whole. The department with 30 faculty members is now ranked among the best materials science and engineering programs in the nation (second only to MIT) by both the NRC and U.S. News & World Report; the Department of Civil Engineering is ranked 8th and Chemistry 12th.

Katherine T. Faber
Katherine T. Faber currently holds the position of Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. Educated at Alfred University with a B.S. in Ceramic Engineering (1975), she then went on to the Pennsylvania State University for a M.S. in Ceramic Science (1978) and to the University of California at Berkeley for a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering (1982). She has held the positions of Invited Summer Employee at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1975, 76) and Development Associate at the Carborundum Company (1978-79) and Visiting Professor of Materials at the University of California at Santa Barbara (Winter 1996). Prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern in 1988, she was Assistant and Associate Professor of Ceramic Engineering at the Ohio State University (1982-87). Her administrative positions have included Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the McCormick School (1992-97) and Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (1998-2003). Her research interests include fracture and toughening of ceramics, ceramic composites and coatings, thermal shock and reliability. She has published more than 100 papers and edited one book in the area of fracture and toughening mechanisms in ceramics, glasses, electronic materials, cement-based materials, and ceramic-matrix composites, and has been named an ISI Highly Cited Author. In conservation science, her interests lie in the phase analysis of silicate-based materials including members of the jade family. Contact: k-faber@northwestern.edu

David C. Dunand
David C. Dunand is the James and Margie Krebs Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. He received a BS/MS in materials from ETH (Zurich) in 1986 and a PhD in metallurgy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991. Prior to joining Northwestern University in 1997, he was Assistant and then Associate Professor in the department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT (1991-96). He has published over 125 journal articles, holds 6 US patents, and has co-edited 2 conference proceedings books. His research group is studying the processing, structure and mechanical properties of novel metallic alloys, composites and foams with applications in fields as varied as aerospace, automotive, superconductivity and bio-implants. He has strong interest in archeometallurgy, as well as ancient and modern metallic artifacts and works of art.

 Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers, with an annual operating budget of about $475 million supporting approximately 200 research projects, ranging from studies of the atomic nucleus to global climate change research. Since 1990, Argonne has worked with more than 600 companies and numerous federal agencies and other organizations producing cutting-edge research leading to important technological breakthroughs. Argonne's Advanced Photon Source is a center of excellence, with sophisticated research facilities far beyond the capacity of any individual company or university to build and operate, but with a policy of open access through competitive application. The laboratory is also home to the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source, the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System and other facilities at the forefront of scientific research. Through the collaboration with NU, AIC now has access to this thriving community of scientists who have expressed interest in working with us on scientific projects.

Jon Almer 
Jon is a beamline scientist at Sector1 of the Advanced Photon Source, at Argonne National Laboratory. He received his PhD in materials science at Northwestern University, where he worked with thesis advisor J.B. Cohen to investigate the effects of residual stresses on fatigue properties. He then worked as a post-doc at Linkoping University, Sweden, on the microstructural and tribological properties of metal-nitride coatings. His current research interest involves use of high-energy x-rays to solve a variety of materials science, biological and engineering problems, with an array of techniques including wide- and small-angle scattering, fluorescence and imaging.

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