Panelists:
Ashleigh Brown, Paper and Photographic Conservator at the Royal Collection Trust, Windsor
Presenting on the conservation and preparation for Drawing the Italian Renaissance, The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, October 31, 2024-March 8, 2025.

Claire Van Cleave, Independent Scholar
Presenting on her recent publication, The Farnese Drawings Collection

Freyda Spira, Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale University Art Gallery
Presenting on an upcoming exhibition tentatively titled Mythmaking in Italian 19^th century Drawings that will open in the Fall of 2027.

Moderated by:
Margaret Holben Ellis, Eugene Thaw Professor Emerita of Paper Conservation, NYU

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Ashleigh Brown is a Paper and Photographic Conservator at the Royal Collection Trust, Windsor. Prior to joining the Royal Collection, she was self-employed for more than five years, and co-founded The Conservators Ltd. based in London. Ashleigh is originally from Washington DC, and attributes her passion for Renaissance art to her early exposure to museums in the DC area.

Claire Van Cleave is an expert on Renaissance art with a specialization in Italian drawings. After graduating from Georgetown University, she completed her M.A. at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and a D.Phil at Christ Church, Oxford, where the topic of her dissertation was the drawings of Luca Signorelli. Major publications include Master Drawings of the Renaissance for the British Museum and the Reunion des Musées Nationaux, and, as co-author, Italian Master Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum. She also curated the drawings galleries for the Luca Signorelli exhibition in Perugia in 2012. Claire is a native Chicagoan, but has lived in the United Kingdom for nearly forty years. Although she is often found in Naples or Rome, her home is in the English county of Lincolnshire.

Freyda Spira was appointed the Robert L. Solley Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery in 2021. In this role, she oversees a collection of over 40,000 prints and drawings created around the globe between the 15th and 21st centuries. Before going to Yale, she held various roles at the Metropolitan Museum of Art over the course of eighteen years. Freyda’s final position at the Met was as the Associate Curator of Northern Renaissance and Baroque prints, drawings, and illustrated books. Freyda holds a B.A. from Barnard College, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Margaret Holben Ellis has taught the conservation treatment of prints and drawings, as well as technical connoisseurship for art historians. She has published and lectured on artists ranging from Raphael, Dürer, and Leonardo to Pollock, Samaras, Lichtenstein, and Dubuffet. Her research on artists’ materials and techniques is similarly wide-ranging and encompasses Day-Glo colors, Magic Markers, and Crayola crayons. At present, she serves as Exhibition Paper Conservator for Willem de Kooning: Drawing for the Art Institute of Chicago.

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This event is organized by The Drawing Foundation in partnership with the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and in association with Master Drawings New York 2025.

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Image: Luigi Sabatelli (Italian, 1772–1850), Orestes and the Furies, n.d. Pen and brown ink and graphite. Yale University Art Gallery, partial gift of Roberta J. M. Olson and Alexander B. V. Johnson and purchased with the Everett V. Meeks, B.A. 1901, Fund (2023.38.138).