Margaret Holben Ellis gave a Brown Bag Lunch presentation on Wednesday, March 2, 2016, from 12–1:30 pm. Her talk was entitled “Paper Is Part of the Picture.”

Many of us spend time looking at, enjoying, deciphering, and mentally untangling marks on paper—but what about the paper itself? Paper can be read, just like the marks on it. And it involves more senses than just sight!

Margaret Holben Ellis is the Eugene Thaw Professor of Paper Conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and serves as Director of the Thaw Conservation Center at The Morgan Library & Museum. She is currently Vice-President and Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC), Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC), and Accredited Conservator/Restorer of the International Institute of Conservation (ICON). Her professional and academic awards include the Caroline and Sheldon Keck Award (2003) and the Rutherford John Gettens Merit Award (1997), both conferred by the AIC; the Rome Prize (2014), awarded by the American Academy in Rome; and most recently, a scholar’s residency at the Getty Conservation Institute (2015). She has published and lectured on artists ranging from Raphael and Titian to Pollock, Samaras, and Lichtenstein, and her research on artists’ materials is similarly far-ranging. Her most recent publication is Historical Perspectives in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper (2015), published by the Getty Conservation Institute. She received her BA from Barnard College and both her MA in Art History and an Advanced Certificate in Conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.