Contributions to Conservation Science

Dr. ROBERT FELLER was awarded the National Gallery of Art Fellowship at Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh in 1950 shortly after receiving his Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry. In 1967 he became director of the Research Center on the Materials of the Artist and Conservator at Mellon Institute, then a part of Carnegie Mellon University. He is author of the book, Accelerated Aging: Photochemical and Thermal Effects; editor of Artists' Pigments, Volume 1; co-author with N. Stolow and E. Jones of On Picture Varnishes and Their Solvents, and with M. Wilt, Evaluation of Cellulose Ethers for Conservation. An Honorary Fellow of both the International and the American Institutes for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, he is a past president of the American Group of IIC (the forerunner of AIC). He received the Pittsburgh Award of the American Chemical Society in 1983 in recognition of his research contributions, and the University Products Award from AIC in 2000 for his service to conservation. Since his retirement in 1988, Dr. Feller has been Director Emeritus of the Center. The editor, PAUL M. WHITMORE, jointed the Research Center on the Materials of the Artist and Conservator to become Director after the retirement of Dr. Feller in 1988. After earning a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, he began his conservation career in Los Angeles, working at the Environmental Quality Laboratory at Caltech, where he studied air pollution damage to art objects for the Getty Conservation Institute. He later worked as a scientist in the conservation department of the Harvard University Art Museums.