1998 Award Recipient: W. Thomas Chase
Recently retired as Head Conservator of the Department of Conservation and Scientific Research of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Tom Chase is continuing his affiliation there as Research Associate as well as offering consulting services through Chase Art Services. Educated in conservation and art history at Oberlin and the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, Tom first found his way to the Freer for a student internship under the supervision of Rutherford J. Gettans. After completing his degree at the Institute under Alexander Soper, he returned to the Freer and became Head Conservator in 1968. A Fellow of International and American Institutes of Conservation, he was instrumental in organizing a bronze treatment project in Thailand in 1974 with the cooperation of the John D. Rockefeller 3d Fund and the Thai Department of Fine Arts, was part of an Art and Archaeology Delegation to China in 1973, and attended the BUMA (Beginning of the Use of Metals and Alloys) Symposia in China in 1981 and 1994. Tom’s primary research interest is the technical study of ancient Chinese bronzes.

1997 Award Recipient: Henry Lie
Henry Lie became interested in conservation through his undergraduate studies at Harvard University, where he majored in art history. He went on to work with Norman Weiss on architectural preservation projects and on the development of silane-based consolidant for stone. Soon afterwards he earned his Master's of Science at the University of Delaware and worked for the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. He has been involved in archaeological excavations in England, Cyprus, Turkey and Israel, and is currently the director and Senior Conservator of Objects at the Strauss Center for Conservation at the Harvard Art Museums. Mr. Lie studied techniques used in the fabrication of 54 large-scale Greek and Roman bronzes between 1994 and 1996. The results of these studies were published in the Harvard University Art Museums' recent catalogue The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes in the North American Collections.

1996 Award Recipient: Marjorie B. Cohn
Through her distinguished career, Marjorie Cohn has seamlessly merged the worlds of conservation and art history in both the museum and the classroom. One of the world's foremost authorities on artwork on paper, she has shared her insights with generations of students who have come to her because of the wide range of her knowledge, enthusiasm, and easy accessibility.

Before becoming Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Fogg Art Museum/Harvard University Art Museums in 1989, Cohn served nearly 30 years as a paper conservator for the museums. Cohn studied the drawings of Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres extensively and contributed to three exhibitions on the French artist. She also helped organize a 1988 exhibition on Mark Rothko's Harvard murals. In 1987 she edited the revised edition of the William J. Ivins book How Prints Look.

1995 Award Recipient: Molly Ann Faries
Molly Ann Faries has devoted her career to the examination of Netherlandish paintings with infrared reflectology, one of the most exciting research tools developed in the last decade. Through her individual efforts, as well as through her extensive collaboration with conservators and scientists in this country and abroad, she has earned an international reputation as an art historian who has brought to fruition the enormous potential of this examination technique. It was fitting that in 1995, on the twentieth anniversary of her seminal study on the underdrawings in the workshop of Jan van Scorel, she was honored with this award.

1994 Award Recipient: Maryan Ainsworth
Dr. Maryan Ainsworth, a senior research fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was commended for her role as art historian within a conservation department. At the MMA, where she has been on staff since before receiving her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1982, she conducts research of northern Renaissance paintings with an emphasis on establishing an archive of underdrawings and projects concerning the integration of technical examination of paintings with art historical information. Ainsworth also directs an internship program for art historians in the museum's paintings conservation department and is working to develop new technology in the field of infrared reflectography. She is an adjunct professor for Columbia University at Barnard College.

1993 Award Recipient: Arthur Wheelock
Curator of Northern Baroque Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Dr. Wheelock was cited as a leader in "building bridges between the worlds of art history and conservation." Wheelock, who received his Ph.D. at Harvard University, has incorporated conservation into his teaching and writing and has excelled at communicating with conservators. He has developed materials for several universities and published numerous writings that emphasize the need for collaboration and dialogue between the art history and conservation fields.

1992 Award Recipient: Robert Feller
Dr. Feller was selected because of his past and continuing efforts to apply scientific research to conservation and scholarship. After receiving his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Rutgers University, Dr. Robert Feller joined the Mellon Institute of Pittsburgh and eventually became senior fellow of National Gallery of Art Research Project of artists' materials. In 1976, he served as director, and later director emeritus, of the Center for Materials of the Artist and Conservator, established through a grant from the Mellon Foundation. His diverse and varied research includes analysis of resins, solvents and synthetic picture varnishes, color and pigment in works of art and light and its deteriorating effects. Feller held key posts with the International Institute for Conservation and the American Institute for Conservation and served as chairman from 1975 to 1979 of the National Conservation Advisory Council, founder of the National Institute of Conservation.

1991 Award Recipient: Gridley McKim-Smith, Greta Anderson-Bergdoll, Richard Newman, Andrew Davidhazy
This interdisciplinary research team demonstrated the extent to which meaning may be derived from the making of art. Their book, Examining Velasquez addresses the brushwork, color and paint in Velasquez's paintings and uses the analysis of technical elements to contribute to art historical interpretation. This innovative method combines the research techniques of both art history and conservation.