Suzanne Deal Booth gives Endowment for Conservation Teaching
August 5, 2019
The Department of Art History has received a $1 million gift from Suzanne Deal Booth for the funding of art conservation courses and internships.
This new endowment builds upon the efforts of our conservation teaching collaboration with the Art Institute, implemented in spring of 2018 as part of the Mellon Foundation-funded Chicago Objects Study Initiative (COSI); it assures the perpetuity of our art conservation and conservation science course offerings as well as an annual undergraduate internship in the field.
The extraordinary gift marks UChicago as one of the few national institutions to offer regular art conservation and conservation science courses at the college level within a liberal arts institution. Over just a year and a half, the classes have drawn undergraduate students ranging from chemistry and geophysical sciences to studio art, alongside doctoral students ranging from molecular engineering to art history. One is off to a Gates Cambridge Fellowship in chemistry with a focus on art conservation!
We look forward to continuing to collaborate on these classes and internships with the Art Institute and with our campus partners, including the Smart Museum, the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, the Oriental Institute, and Special Collections at the Regenstein Library.
We are immensely grateful to Suzanne for her visionary generosity.
