Art Scoping

What do James Brown’s album Sex Machine and the Renaissance sculptor Donatello have to do with protecting the art of our time? Find out in this wide-ranging conversation with Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, the Melva Bucksbaum Associate Director for Conservation and Research at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and for over a decade the Founding Director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums. For nineteen years she served as Chief Conservator of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, where she founded the Artists Documentation Program, consisting of interviews with artists about the technical nature of their art. The consummate artist whisperer, she has pioneered new forms of conservation treatment, is an influential mentor for the field, and presides over the care of a globally renowned collection of modern and contemporary art.