September 8 2014: CUNNINGHAM, Roland H.

ROLAND HADLEY CUNNINGHAM

Roland Hadley Cunningham, 75, died of cancer August 16, 2014 at Casey House, Montgomery Hospice, Rockville, MD He lived in Silver Spring and has been a resident since 1982. A Memorial Service will be held at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church, 3215 Powder Mill Road, Adelphi, MD 20783, on September 13, 2004 at 3 p.m., with reception to follow from 3:30 to 5 p.m. We want to celebrate this man’s Body of Work, so please bring your favorite memories to share.

BA New York University, 1962; NYU School of Fine Arts Conservation Program 1969; served as Chief Paintings Conservator for the Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut, from 1971 to 1981. From 1982, he served as Senior Paint Conservator with the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Conservation and Materials, Museum Support Center, Suitland, MD, retiring Emeritus in 2010.

His career spanned more than 50 years, taking him to Egypt, Holland, France, Germany, and Italy, where he restored paintings and objects damaged in the floods in Florence and Milan in 1967. He is also credited with restoring the Trumbull paintings of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence for the Bicentennial while at the Wadsworth Athenaeum, restoring the “Little Mermaid” on the Brown University Campus, restoring the murals on the Tarrytown, NY estate of Nelson Rockefeller, repairing the staircase panel from the Whistler exhibit when he first arrived in DC, restoring the two 4th to 10th century Japanese Fresco’s hanging in the stairwell of the Sackler Gallery for the permanent collection, and most recently x-raying Alan Shepherd’s spacesuit for the National Air and Space Museum’s publication and tour “Suited for Space”.

Mr. Cunningham made significant contributions and articles in the AIC Journals, Microscopy Today, and research in materials and pigments.