Biography

Carol Mancusi-Ungaro serves as Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Founding Director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museum. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Connecticut College in 1968 and a Master of Arts degree from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University in 1970. For nineteen years she served as Chief Conservator of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. During that time she consulted on the conservation of twentieth century paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and founded the Artists Documentation Program wherein she interviews artists about the technical nature of their art. She has lectured widely on the conservation of modern art and contributed to monographs on Jasper Johns, Brice Marden, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock and to the catalogue raisonné of Barnett Newman. In 2004 she received the College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation, and in 2009 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the first practicing conservator to be so honored. In her joint position, she continues to engage in research documenting the materials and techniques of living artists as well as other issues pertaining to the conservation of modern art.