Our thanks and best wishes to Melanie Gifford on her retirement

​Melanie Gifford has taught techniques of microscopic paint analysis for the Winterthur/UD Art Conservation Program since 1981—four decades of inspiring our Master's-level students by her combination of top-notch connoisseurship/art-historical research and exactitude for pigment characteristics as seen through a microscope. She retired in August 2021 after nearly 30 years in the Scientific Research Department at the National Gallery of Art (and 15 years before that at The Walters Art Museum). Her primary focus has been on the art of Northern Europe from the 15th through the 17th centuries: her publications include studies of Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, Georges de La Tour, Jan van Goyen, and Jan van Eyck. Gifford has also carried out studies on works by other artists, ranging from Veronese to Manet. She earned an M.A. in Art History from Williams College in 1976 and an M.A. in Art Conservation in 1979 from the S.U.N.Y./Cooperstown program in Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, with additional training in the Scientific Department at the National Gallery, London. Her full retirement will be delayed by one last National Gallery research project (she has noted: “who could walk away from Vermeer?"). Next she will embark on new adventures in independent research (“starting with my beloved Dutch landscapes").

An honored scholar, she has often been cited and quoted in major publications. In a 2017 review in The Burlington Magazine of a National Gallery of Art Vermeer exhibition, Christopher Brown noted an “excellent essay by Melanie Gifford and Lisha Glinsman that presents the results of technical analysis. . . . It is extremely valuable to have such well-presented scientific evidence." [Melanie has expertly succeeded in convincing many art historians to pay attention to technical art history; for this we are especially grateful.] In 2012, John Kelly of the Washington Post turned her visit to the Musée de Tessé, [an art museum in the French city of Le Mans] into a mystery tale as she studied a van Aelst still life painting on a day when the electricity was turned off, and special generators were brought in. Kelly admiringly described her working methods and comparative photographic materials. In The Art Newspaper in 2011, Will Shank noted that his “favourite paper" [in the recent National Gallery Technical Bulletin] was “the thoughtful essay by Melanie Gifford, who has spent a career studying Dutch Old Master paintings": “Material as Metaphor: Non-Conscious Thinking in 17^th-century Painting Practice," and went on to say that she had entered “the world of neuroscience and cognitive psychology."

In the early 1980s, soon after Melanie was first asked to work with our program, we were visited by an international group of senior teaching conservators escorted by Paul Perrot of the Smithsonian. When he emerged from the room where Melanie had explained her teaching approach, he came over to me and said, “You certainly have found EXCELLENT people." I was Associate Director of WUDPAC at that time and am proud to say I had asked her to join our teaching team.

Gwen Tauber (WUDPAC 1984 and Paintings Conservator at the Rijksmuseum), was in the first class Melanie taught. Gwen noted: "Melanie's microscopy class was taught with such totally contagious enthusiasm and precision that we were all inspired to maintain the skills she taught and to continue passionately sleuthing artists' techniques throughout our own professional careers" and “"In my own work at the Rijksmuseum I have had the fortune to stay in close touch with Melanie due in large part to her preference for Dutch technical studies which has so often brought her overseas. She has continued to teach me, guide me, and to answer my technical queries in stimulating discussions over the ensuing 40 years!! We even shared a wondrous discovery of a second phase of underdrawing - sketched over an initial translucent paint layer in ter Borch paintings (both in the Rijksmuseum's collection as well as in the National Gallery's collection, among others), a sort of 'resketching' or 'intermediate sketch.' And most recently I've identified a red ochre 'scaling grid' using PLM [polarized light microscopy] on paintings by Lucas van Leyden and school. All thanks to my mentor Melanie."

Sydney Beall (WUDPAC 2016 and most recently a paintings conservator at the Yale University Art Gallery) noted: “Dr. Melanie Gifford has been an outstanding mentor and teacher to the WUDPAC community. With her vast wealth of knowledge in artist's pigments and investigation of painting techniques, she taught these subjects with a passionate enthusiasm that inspired all of us to delve deeper into the materiality of our painting treatments. Identifying 18th-century pigments with her using Polarized Light Microscopy was an enjoyable and memorable time of my second-year at Winterthur." 

Gerrit Albertson (WUDPAC 2017 and now a Fellow at the National Gallery of Art) wrote: “I have always thought of Melanie Gifford as one the giants of our field--someone for an emerging conservator like me to strive to emulate. She is thoughtful in her work and thorough in looking at paintings, and her aim is always the same: to better understand a work of art and the artist who made it. She has always been generous with her talents, as well. As coordinator of the Fellows at the National Gallery of Art and as a guest scholar and lecturer for conservation training programs, including WUDPAC, Melanie has worked closely with hundreds of emerging conservation students and professionals over her career. My time with Melanie at the National Gallery was a bit unusual -- shortly after I arrived, she began phasing out of her role as Fellow coordinator as her retirement neared, and then COVID hit, sending us all home to work remotely. Nonetheless, Melanie went out of her way to help me think about and organize a successful Fellow research project, and she was always eager and willing to help me think through any questions with which I was grappling, always with keen insights and an enviable clarity of mind. I imagine I will be trying to live up to her example for years to come."

Melanie Gifford has lent her excellent approach to scholarship to our program for four decades, strengthening our thinking and problem-solving abilities. As Gerrit said above, we will be “trying to live up to her example for years to come."

— Joyce Hill Stoner, August 2021​