Elisabeth West FitzHugh, research associate for the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has been awarded the 1999 College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation. The award recognizes individuals or groups who have enhanced the understanding of art through application, knowledge, or experience in conservation, art history, and art.
Ms. FitzHugh has spent the majority of her career as a conservation scientist with the Freer and Sackler galleries primarily researching materials of the art and archaeology of Asia. She has analyzed samples from a variety of objects such as Oriental lacquer, pottery, and Near Eastern works of art on paper, and has studied the Freer Gallery's collections of early Chinese Jade for mineral identification and Chinese bronze ceremonial vessels by emission spectroscopy for a catalog of the bronzes.
In recent years, her specialty has been the history and identification of pigments, and throughout her career she has published in a variety of conservation journals.
Ms. FitzHugh received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Vassar College. She studied chemistry and biochemistry at the American University of Beirut and earned a diploma in the Archaeology of Western Asia from the University of London's Institute of Archaeology.
She began her career at The Archaeology Museum of the American University of Beirut and spent a year as a member of an Oriental Institute expedition in Iraq.
An active member of the International Institute for Conservation and the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, Ms. FitzHugh has held various committee and board positions, and has served as editor with both organizations.
The award will be presented at the 1999 Heritage Preservation Annual Meeting in October.