Ouachita to host Dr. Gregory Smith in Nell Mondy Lecture Series April 23
April 13, 2018
- Addy Goodman
Ouachita Baptist University’s J.D. Patterson School of Natural Sciences will host
Dr. Gregory Smith, the Otto N. Frenzel III Senior Conservation Scientist at the Indianapolis
Museum of Art at Newfields, on Monday, April 23. The lecture, “Solving Art Mysteries
through Chemistry,” will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Ouachita’s Walker Conference Center
and is free and open to the public.
The Nell Mondy Lecture Series provides participants the opportunity “to see some really
cool applications of science in the real world,” said Dr. Sara Hubbard, associate
professor of chemistry. “We all have preconceived notions about what science is and
if it matters to us. The thing is, there are lots of ways to do science, and science
shows up everywhere in everything we do.”
Smith will speak about his use of science to unravel mysteries surrounding the artworks
at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Using a range of spectroscopic, chromatographic
and imaging techniques, his team employs the tools of chemistry to discover lost paintings,
explore the material history of objects and detect forgeries. The lecture will explore
the various roles that chemists can play in a fine arts museum, culminating in recent
research into the world’s oldest manmade pigment, Egyptian blue, first synthesized
in 3200 B.C. As a result of this research, this ancient pigment has been repurposed
as a luminescent fingerprint dusting powder to catch modern-day criminals.
Smith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in anthropology/sociology and chemistry
from Centre College before pursuing graduate studies at Duke University in time-domain
vibrational spectroscopy and archaeological fieldwork. His postgraduate training included
investigations of pigment degradation processes and palette studies of illuminated
manuscripts at the British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, development
of synchrotron infrared microscopy facilities at the National Synchrotron Light Source
at Brookhaven and researching cleaning issues related to artists’ acrylic emulsion
paints at the National Gallery of Art.
Smith joined the faculty of the conservation training program at Buffalo State College
in 2004 as the Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Conservation Science. In 2010,
he was named the senior conservation scientist at the Indianapolis Museum of Art,
where he has constructed a state-of-the-art research facility to study and preserve
the museum’s encyclopedic collection of nearly 56,000 works of art.
The endowed Nell Mondy Lecture Series was established in 1991 by the late Dr. Nell
Mondy, a 1943 Ouachita alumna. Dr. Mondy was a worldwide consultant on food chemistry
and nutrition and was professor of nutritional foods, food science and toxicology
at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
For more information, contact Dr. Sara Hubbard at [email protected] or (870) 245-5533.
By Addy Goodman
April 13, 2018
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