Awarded both the Charles Garside AMC Summer Travel Grant and HART Lovett Fellowship, Ella Langridge, a rising senior majoring in Art History and Medieval & Early Modern Studies, was selected to the San Gemini Preservations Program in Italy for two months over the summer. The program is dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage and offer students the opportunity to study and travel in Italy where they acquire hands-on experience in restoration and conservation.
“I am planning to attend the San Gemini Preservation Studies program’s course on Traditional Painting Methods as well as this program’s Intersession Preservation Tour in order to further my understanding and pursue research pertaining to the materiality, preservation, and later reception of Medieval and Early Modern Italian Art.
My main goal in attending this program on Traditional Painting Methods is to gain practical experience with handling these materials, as education for this technical skill and knowledge is not readily available in the traditional academic environment. This would allow me to dive deeper into questions pertaining to materiality: What effect do the materials and processes involved in making a work of art have on its meaning? What effects do materials have on the historical and modern conditions under which that work might be viewed?
I am planning to do an honors thesis in art history in the coming academic year, focusing on the art in Roman churches to which pilgrims traveled.”
The Charles Garside AMC Summer Travel Grant supports archaeological training and course-related fieldwork abroad for AMC majors. It is named in honor of the late Charles Garside, a beloved professor of History at Rice, and is generously supported by Rice graduate and Humanities Advisory Board member Bruce Dunlevie.