Staff Profile
Philip and Lynn Straus Senior Conservator of Works of Art on Paper and Head of Paper Lab
penley_knipe@harvard.edu / 617-496-1902
M.S., Winterthur Museum/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation
B.A., St. Lawrence University
Penley Knipe (she/her) studies and preserves the museums’ sizable collection of works of art on paper. Recent projects include the technical study of the paper objects found inside the sculpture Prince Shōtoku at Age Two (2019.122.10–.25) and the techniques and materials employed in American watercolors and Islamic and Indian works on paper. For two years, Knipe served as chair of the Book and Paper Group of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. With her Straus Center colleagues, Knipe teaches material-focused classes at Harvard University and the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art (SITSA).
Recent Publications
Penley Knipe and Miriam Stewart, “Material Matters (A Watercolor Treasury, Support, Reserve, Opacity, Intervention, Resist, Impermanence).” In American Watercolors, 1880–1990: Into the Light, ed. Joachim Homann, Margaret Morgan Grasselli, and Miriam Stewart. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums. Forthcoming.
Penley Knipe, Rachel Saunders, and Angela Chang, “Hābādo Daigaku Bijutsukan shozō Namubutsu Taishi zō (Prince Shōtoku at Age Two at the Harvard Art Museums).” In Hābādo Daigaku Bijutsukan zō Namubutsu Taishi zō kenkyū shiryōshū, ed. Abe Yasuro, Abe Mika, Seya Takayuki, and Seya Ai. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Bijutsu Shuppan. Forthcoming.
“Spotlight: François Nicolas Martinet’s Goldfish.” In Dare to Know: Prints and Drawings in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Edouard Kopp, Elizabeth M. Rudy, and Kristel Smentek, 153–57. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2022.
Julie H. Wertz, Arthur A. McClelland, Debora D. Mayer, and Penley Knipe. “Modeling Chemical Tests and Fiber Identification of Paper Materials using Principal Component Analysis and Specular Reflection FTIR Data.” Heritage 5 (2022): 1960–73.
Katherine Beaty and Penley Knipe. “The Berenson Anthology: Conservation and Material History of the Manuscript.” In Persian Manuscripts & Paintings from the Berenson Collection, ed. Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım, 99–105. Florence, Italy: I Tatti, 2021.
“The Papers in the Harvard Qajar Album.” In An Album of Artists’ Drawings from Qajar Iran, ed. David J. Roxburgh, 55–59. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Art Museums, 2017.