Aniko Bezur

Dr. Anikó Bezur is Wallace S. Wilson Director of Scientific Research of the Technical Studies Laboratory at the Yale Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. She and her team use a variety of imaging and instrumental analytical techniques to examine and analyze cultural heritage objects to learn about materials, manufacturing techniques, and changes in appearance and other properties due to aging and human activities. Previously, Dr. Bezur was Andrew W. Mellon Research Scientist for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Menil Collection, worked at the Art Institute of Chicago as associate conservation scientist, and served as a lecturer and assistant professor of conservation science in the Art Conservation Department at Buffalo State College.

Dr. Bezur holds a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Arizona and completed graduate internships at the Getty Conservation Institute and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute. Her research interests include the study of ancient and historic technologies in the creation of material culture, the alteration of objects through use and degradation, and the adaptation and improvement of analytical techniques. Recent projects include study of the Yale University Art Gallery’s Education of the Virgin, reattributed to painter Diego Velázquez in 2005 by John Marciari, and the discovery and documentation of a rare salt on Virgin and Child, a terracotta relief by Michele da Firenze. She has published on the still life paintings by Willem van Aelst, the use of house paints by Pablo Picasso, European porcelain, the use of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy in the study of porcelain objects, and other subjects. Dr. Bezur worked with the Sicán Archaeological Project in Peru for over a decade, studying the copper metallurgy of the Middle Sicán period (900–1100 CE) and assisting with materials characterization and conservation needs of the excavated materials.