She was one helluva dame.
With love from Surly.
-Susan Nash
This photo was taken c. 2000
when we (from left: Scott
Nolley, Conservator; Mrs. Keck;
Amy Fernandez Byrne, Conservator;
and Ann Motley, Registrar of Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation's Abby
Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center)
were in Cooperstown installing the exhibition "The Kingdoms of Edward
Hicks." She entertained us with great vigor, making a series of bounteous
steak lunches over three days, scaling the hillside in front of her home on
hands and knees to harvest fern heads for our meal. She paid me a great compliment: "You
sure are an adroit martini maker!"She was so gracious
and I was so thrilled to have had the chance to meet her.
-Scott W. Nolley
I remember Ma Keck as a feisty woman in a lab coat and
sneakers with a big heart and powerful vision. She could
see qualities in her students they didn't know they had.
I experienced this first-hand as a graduate student at
Cooperstown when she assigned leadership of the 1979
NYC summer work project to me. I was stunned and argued
that several other classmates would be better suited
for the role, but anyone who knew her knows how far
I got with that one. She knew who her students were before
they did. For the far-reaching impact she had on the
lives of her students and, through us, on conservation,
I honor the one and only Ma Keck.
-Sandra R. Blackard, AIC Fellow
As a former
student of Sheldon Keck, that gentlemanly
teacher and scholar of painting
conservation, I remember hearing
stories about Caroline, his wife,
before we actually met. Opinionated,
sometimes rude, but always honest,
you always knew where you stood
in her hierarchy. Art conservation
was her love and she was a driving
force for the profession, both
as a practicing conservator and
educator. She hated phonies, those
who say they supported conservation
but didn't, and those who mistreated
works of art. We
maintained an off and on correspondence
after Sheldon passed away and I
treasure the letters I received
from her, which were personal,
biting in content, and sometimes
funny. You had to be careful whom
you showed them to. Time didn't
diminish by much her outspokenness
or the sharpness of her thinking. Up
until a couple of years ago - when
she was 97! - she was still a force
to be reckoned with. There
was no one like her and her contributions
to art conservation are immense.
May her soul rest in peace.
-Norman Muller
From
an incredibly profound experience , and keen awareness
of the fragility of life with those whom we had the
opportunity to share, I send my deepest sympathy to the
family of Caroline Keck and all those lives who have
been enriched by her knowledge. I was introduced to Caroline
Keck's book, The Care of Paintings, in 1970, and found
it to be what I considered the finest work in the area
of art conservation. I still use her book and quote her
demands of proper ethical standards for a person restoring
a painting. I have never had the opportunity to have
met Caroline Keck personally, but assure you I admired
her for her outstanding contribution in the field of
art conservation.
Please send my deepest sympathy to her family and please
let them know she has touched my life and had enhanced
my work as a conservator, even today. I still use her
book she had written in 1965, as a reference guide. I
felt honored to have read her book and could quote her
passages with ease to any client who questioned my methods
and my technique as an art conservator. My Mentor, Aubrey
B. Pruet (deceased 1984), felt she was ahead of her
time in a field of science mostly generated by men. I
am very saddened to hear of her passing and will light
a memorial candle for her as she has indeed enhanced
my life.
-Jan
Suberman
How sad it is to learn that Caroline Keck has passed
away. In the field of conservation and preservation
of works of art she was a force for good and a
pioneer. She will long be remembered and honored
by all who knew her.
-Jonathan Fairbanks
Caroline Keck was an inspiration to all that crossed
her path, I am sure. I was fortunate to be able to spend
a week of so in her home during the early years of Cooperstown
new school of Conservation. I remember how energetic she
was, up at 5 or 6, cooking breakfast for 6 or more, working
many hours in the studio and then dinner for us. After
dinner she would go upstairs and work on her writing. I
remember her with great fondness. She once said to me on
the phone that I was good to come to the defense of another
honorable conservator. She and Sheldon were a force that
few couples can ever emulate.
-Franklin Shores
[Note: I have never been as frank and straightforward
as Caroline Keck, but there is no way to convey her personality
without using some of her own words. If one is offended,
it’s too f---ing bad.]
I lived in Cooperstown for many years, and had first
met Sheldon and Caroline when I was in graduate school.
At that time, they were directing the conservation graduate
program there, and Bruce Buckley was directing the museum
studies program, in which I was enrolled. Caroline tolerated
the museum students, although she indicated we had no
business nosing around the conservation labs unless we
were invited. I later returned to Cooperstown for twenty
years as a museum curator, and for some reason was able
to drop by and talk to Caroline and ask for advice on
museum collections matters. She often suggested I get
the hell out of the Cooperstown museums, but she looked
kindly on my efforts there. The same could not be said
of everyone. She was quite protective of her “young”,
as she called her students, but one day when I was speaking
with her, a conservator from outside the graduate program
phoned her. I was entertained by a classic Caroline performance,
as she smiled and rolled her eyes at me, while listening
to the tale of woe. The conservator had inadvertently
left out an isolating layer when placing a painting on
a vacuum hot table, and now the painting was firmly adhered
to the table. In her sweetest voice, she said, “Well,
dear, here is what you must do. Go to your kitchen and
find your largest, sharpest knife.” After a dramatic
pause, she concluded, “Then you must slit your
f---ing throat!”
Her parties for visiting experts were quite lavish,
but you never knew when that Caroline touch would creep
in. Perhaps it would be the silver fork with the outer
tines carefully curled over, so that it looked as if
it were flipping you off. It might be straightforward,
as you were summoned to dine: “It’s time
to eat! If you starve to death it’s your own f---ing
fault.”
Caroline was bold enough to make fun of herself, too,
of course. At the end of a hospital stay many years ago,
she was being wheeled to the front door in a wheelchair,
and said to all within range, “Now you can say
you have seen a bitch on wheels.” It may
have been during the same course of treatment that she
requested a certain lead-foil ornament be brought to
her secretly. In her x-ray the next day, the doctors
were surprised to see a broken heart in the middle of
her chest.
At the risk of ending this thought on too maudlin a
note, I must say that no one was ever more willing to
put all her strength into educating the “young”,
and even speaking with assemblies of museum folks who
needed to know what she had to impart. I still have my
copy of the electromagnetic spectrum handout, one of
about fifty copies she distributed at one conference,
and each copy was hand-colored. A Keck original.
-A. Bruce MacLeish
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