The Washington Conservation Guild is happy to announce the recipients of the Williston Fund for the 2022/2023 season. The Sidney S. Williston Memorial Fund supports all of our emerging professionals by providing activities such as lab tours, social events, and virtual learning workshops. In addition, the Guild awards up to five recipients with free WCG professional organization membership and, this season, is also encouraging professional development by providing free membership to the American Institute for Conservation (AIC). We look forward to hearing about their conservation efforts at the Emerging Professionals Talks in March.
Morgan Brown is a Sophomore at Johns Hopkins University, working towards a BA in the History of Art, with an additional major in Archaeology, and a minor in Visual Arts. She is currently a member of the WCG Social Media Board and runs the WCG Facebook account. Beginning in January, she will be interning as the Johns Hopkins Collections Tech intern at the National Park Service Museum Resource Center. Previously, she interned with the National Air and Space Museum conservation lab as a member of the Conservation Internship for Broadening Access (CIBA) Program.
Jones Kelly recently graduated from Lewis & Clark College with a BA in Art History and has extensive studio arts experience ranging from printmaking to bronze casting. They have worked as a studio assistant to fiber artist Amanda Triplett, as a gallery attendant for the Hoffman Gallery, and held a year-long internship at the LUX Art Institute. This past summer they held a summer internship in Object and Textile Conservation at the National Gallery of Art. They are currently working as a technician in Frame Conservation at the NGA while completing their organic chemistry prerequisite in order to apply for graduate programs in conservation this winter.
Kelsey Marino is a pre-program conservation technician working in Philadelphia, PA. She has interned at Winterthur Museum and deGhetaldi Fine Art Restoration, LLC and assisted in the investigation of fluorescent inscriptions in works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, led by several Winterthur/University of Delaware Program of Art Conservation alumni. At the New Castle Historical Society, she led a preventive and re-organization project of their historic house museum’s collection, and facilitated the collaboration between the Historical Society and the undergraduate art conservation program at the University of Delaware. Kelsey is also the creator and host of “The Private Project: An Art Conservation Podcast”, where she interviews conservators in private practice to share their insights and the logistics of growing and building a business in the private sector. In her free time, she enjoys painting, drawing, and weightlifting.
Emily Mercer is a 2015 graduate of the University of Mary Washington where she received her Bachelor of Art in Historic Preservation and a minor in Museum Studies. She held pre-program internships at The Chrysler Museum of Art and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in the Archeology, Paper, Textiles, and Wooden Artifacts labs. Mercer is currently a third-year student at SUNY Buffalo State where she is specializing in the conservation of photographic materials. While in graduate school, she held her first summer internship at Paul Messier LLC and her second summer internship in the Photograph Conservation Lab at the National Gallery of Art. She is currently completing her third-year internship at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. During her third year, she will research modern photographic coatings and their effects on condition and treatment.
Katherine Miromonti (she/her) recently graduated from the University of Denver with a BFA in Pre-Art Conservation. She has held pre-program internships at a variety of institutions including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the State Historical Society of Missouri, and Arlington National Cemetery where she gained experience in the conservation of paper, photographs, and outdoor stone and masonry. She is passionate about research and writing, papermaking and bookbinding, and community engagement in cultural heritage institutions.
