News & events
January 14, 2009Hearst Art Gallery Receives NEH Conservation Grant
MORAGA, CA -- The National Endowment for the Humanities has just awarded the Hearst Art Gallery, the art museum of Saint Mary’s College, a conservation grant in support of the William Keith collection. The Saint Mary’s College art collection includes 147 paintings by the late 19th century landscape master artist.The grant will allow the Hearst to hire Andrea Roethe, former Head of Paintings Conservation for the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Palazzo Piti, and Jeanne McKee Roethe, former conservator of the Norton Simon Museum. Over the next year, the noted conservators will assess, photograph, document, and create a conservation and restoration plan for the paintings.
Born in Scotland in 1838, William Keith immigrated to New York in 1850 with his widowed mother and sisters. In 1856 he began a wood engraving apprenticeship that led to a position with Harper and Brothers publications as an illustrator. Keith moved to San Francisco in 1859, married still-life painter Elizabeth Emerson in 1864 and soon acquired a studio in San Francisco. After his wife’s death, Keith married Mary McHenry, the first female attorney in California. He died at his Berkeley home in 1911.
In 1908, Saint Mary’s College professor Brother F. Cornelius Braeg, F.S.C., during a visit with John Muir in his Martinez home, first viewed Keith’s landscapes. So began a life's work that spanned more than half a century, led to a 900 page biography published in 1946 and made Brother Cornelius the foremost expert on this important early California artist.
The Hearst Art Gallery is accredited by the American Association of Museums.
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Contact: Heidi Donner
(925) 631-4069
hdonner@stmarys-ca.edu
hearstartgallery.org
