Miguel Resendiz awarded the inaugural Mark H. Sandler Endowed Undergraduate Experience Award

The Department is delighted to announce that Miguel Resendiz is the inaugural winner of the Mark H. Sandler Endowed Undergraduate Experience Award!

The Department is delighted to announce that Miguel Resendiz is the inaugural winner of the Mark H. Sandler Endowed Undergraduate Experience Award! This award provides annual funds for undergraduate students in the Department so that they may supplement and/or cover the financial costs associated with experiential learning opportunities such as internships and research or service learning.

Miguel is a perfect candidate for this award. Since March 2019, Miguel has worked in the Conservation Studio at The Phillips Collection, as an intern last spring and summer and subsequently on contract to research the standards and procedures for caring for their growing collection of digital art. The Sandler award allows Miguel to devote more time to conduct independent research that will supplement his work at the Phillips during the spring semester. With a proper schedule this spring, Miguel will focus on works in The Phillips Collection that require an unusual combination of conservation skills, skills that center on Miguel’s particular interest and expertise – time-based media art.

As Miguel explains, “Time-based media art (TBMA) is any art that has the dimension of time, such as video and electronic art.” There are seven such works in the collection at the Phillips that, as Miguel notes, “require urgent attention.”  He plans first to assess the state of each work, including “whether the objects still work and run properly,” and then to develop the treatment plans required to ensure their sustainability. His primary site supervisor, Elizabeth Steele, Head of Conservation, has praised his work, calling his time at TPC “a huge success—real win-win situation.” Miguel’s work this semester in developing treatment protocols will allow conservation staff at the Phillips to develop a budget in anticipation of displaying these dynamic pieces among the collection again. With the support of the Sandler award, Miguel will use tools such as those from BitCurator, a system for digital forensics that was developed by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Miguel’s career objective is to work in the field of conservation science, beginning with the necessary but highly competitive process of applying to graduate school.  There are precious few such programs in North America. Miguel’s research at The Phillips Collection forms a critical component of his résumé.  The Sandler award makes possible not only his expanded schedule, but also his path-breaking discoveries there this semester.

Congratulations to Miguel on this well-deserved award!

For more about the Mark H. Sandler Endowed Undergraduate Experience Award, please visit http://arthistory.umd.edu/professor-mark-h-sandler-endowed-undergraduate...

The next deadline for application is 13 March 2020.

Check out Miguel Resendiz talking about his internship as part of the In Frame video series: https://vimeo.com/352120133

Miguel Resendiz conserving a work by Herman Maril at the Conservation Studio at The Phillips Collection

Miguel Resendiz explaining Time-Based Media Art before Bernardi Roig’s Insults to the Public