Alumnae Profile

Helen Mar Parkin ’69

Helen Mar Parkin is a patient person who loves hands-on work and fine detail—essential qualities for a painting conservator.

“People have the idea that art conservation is something showy and glitzy, but I see myself as an anonymous craftsman,” she explains. “I do the magic and then step out of the way so people can admire the art, like a good conductor who does not put her own interpretation on the music.”

Helen Mar Parkin inpaints small losses on a nineteenth century French landscape using a fine watercolor brush and aided by a mahl stick.

Helen Mar studied art history and French at MHC, and later learned painting conservation techniques while earning earned a master’s degree in museology. Later, she earned another M.A., in conservation of historic and artistic works. “There is confusion between restoration and conservation,” Helen Mar says. “Anyone can restore a painting, often badly, but a conservator is trained to examine and treat works of art for future preservation.” An art conservator studies how works are constructed, why they fall apart (time, moisture, insects, light, pollution, dirt…), and how to repair them.

In her thirty-one years as a conservator, Helen Mar has performed miracles on works of art in the Kimball Art Museum in Texas, the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, the Intermuseum Laboratory in Ohio, and the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. She particularly loves American art and has worked on paintings by such artists as Thomas Cole, John Singleton Copley, and Albert Bierstadt.

Helen Mar gets excited with the problem-solving aspect of treating particularly damaged works of art. She is particularly proud of the six years she spent cleaning and in-painting the landscape murals of African-American artist Robert S. Duncanson at the Taft Museum. (In-painting is a painstaking process that uses tiny brushes to add color to areas that have lost paint because of flaking or abrasion. In the case of murals, only about one square foot can be in-painted in a day.) “There’s a sort of Zen place you get to when in-painting,” says Helen Mar. “I have to be relaxed and focused at the same time.”

Helen Mar has been an independent conservator since 2000, which allows her to choose her projects and set her own hours. She currently spends about six months a year working at various locations and enjoys volunteering at a local cat shelter and taking calls for the DFW Wildlife Coalition hotline when she is home in Dallas.

—By Kate Axt ’01

Everything you need to take the next step is already in your life, if you will but look carefully for it. — Penny Gill, Mary Lyon Professor of the Humanities and professor of politics, baccalaureate address, 1993