Rome Prize, presented by the American Academy in Rome, grants “time and space to think and work” annually to a select group of artists, writers, and scholars. This year, Buffalo State alumna Katherine L. Beaty, ’05, was named one of 31 Rome Prize fellows from more than 1,000 applicants.
Beaty, who holds a master of arts and certificate of advanced study in book and paper conservation from Buffalo State University’s Patricia H. and Richard E. Garman Art Conservation Department, was awarded the Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize for Historic Preservation and Conservation. She is receiving a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the academy’s 11-acre campus in Rome, Italy, for 10 months. In that time, Beaty will work on her project, A Technical Study of Italian Archival Bookbindings.
After completing her third-year internship at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. and graduating from Buffalo State, Beaty landed a position as a project conservator at Duke University for one year before completing a fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library. During that fellowship, she applied for her current position as book conservator for special collections at Harvard University’s Weissman Preservation Center, which she has now held for more than 16 years.