Second Saturday – October

Before the painting of Lafayette’s toast could hang in our new “Revolutionary York” exhibit, it needed rescuing. Conservator Kenya Brown Feeser spent countless hours bringing the portrait back to life. At October’s Second Saturday, she’ll take you behind the scenes of that painstaking work and the career that prepared her for it. Reserve your spot today.

About our Speaker:

Baltimore native Kenya Brown Feeser found in art conservation a career that brings together her two passions: art history and science.

After earning a second bachelor’s degree, in art history, from Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, she moved to Florence, Italy, in 2006 to study conservation at Studio Art Centers International. She returned to the U.S. as lead conservator of the Jamestown Project at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. There she directed a team of conservators and volunteers in treating 42,500 metal, wood and ceramic objects. Later, with the National Park Service at Jamestown, she helped catalog objects from Green Spring Plantation.

She went back to Italy to earn a master’s degree in conservation science from the University of Bologna. Her thesis was a collaboration among Duke University, Hood College and the University of Florence. It characterized cleaning protocols using Er:YAG lasers and studied pigment effects in the work of Paul Cézanne, drawing on research at Duke, French science laboratories, Italy’s National Research Council in Florence and Hood’s chemistry department.

Her most notable projects include:

• Caravaggio’s “St. Jerome Writing”
• the restoration of the Edgar Allan Poe statue at the University of Baltimore
• the Boy Scout Memorial in President’s Park near the White House
• the completion of the National Park Service’s Jamestown archaeological conservation project

Closer to home, Kenya served nine years on the York County History Center’s board of directors and remains chair of the History Center’s Collections Committee. She has restored several 19th-century paintings, ceramics and engravings for the History Center, including works in the “Revolutionary York” exhibit, among them the painting of Lafayette’s toast. She has also worked for the Crispus Attucks York History and Culture Center and the Spring Grove Area Historical Society, and she has consulted on the Hanover Area Historical Society’s collection.

Outside the lab, she chaired the Spring Garden Township Police Department Advisory Board from 2021 to 2025. She has also volunteered for five years teaching theological studies at the York County Correctional Facility.