Marin Tisdale on Conservation and Collections Internship with SAM
This past year, UW Textual Studies minor Marin Tisdale interned with the Seattle Art Museum learning about collections management and art conservation. Working with the team at SAM, Marin helped restore The Four Accomplishments, a set of seventeenth-century sliding door paintings from the Nara region of Japan. Below, Marin recounts this work, her experience interning in the museum setting, and how the skills of art conversation crossover with her coursework in the Textual Studies minor.
Art Conservation at SAM
During the internship, Marin worked with Tanya Uyeda, the Senior East Asian Paintings Conservator at SAM to restore a set of seventeenth-century sliding door paintings called, The Four Accomplishments.
Measuring over 68 inches tall, these large paintings are undergoing the process of being remounted in the Tateuchi Conservation Studio.
In order to restabilize the panels, which sit on a latticed, wooden core, they first deconstructed them and laid them out so that they could be individually analyzed. According to Marin, the paintings then went through a damage report, which allowed the conservation team to assess elements like paint loss, overpainting, tears, and mended tears that would be important considerations to the conservation process.
Images showing the conservation process, from a hole in the painting where a door handle used to poke through, to a close up image of the constitution of the painting’s pigments.
Previously being shown in Japan in the twentieth century, the paintings had undergone prior conservation efforts. The team documented these repairs and began their own process, working on elements such as consolidating the pigments of the painting, mending tears, and applying support layers to the panels so they can be remounted to a newly constructed interior lattice.
Materiality of Visual Texts
Marin tell us that part of what makes working on these paintings so interesting is the previous lives they’ve had. Starting as sliding doors which functioned as room dividers, and going through various physical changes throughout their histories, these paintings’ material construction is vital to understanding the uses to which they were put. The remounting work, because it requires dismantling the paintings in their current form, is key to accessing this past that tells about the function, uses, and meaning of the artwork over time.
Art History and the Textual Studies Minor
At UW, Marin has been pursuing both an Art History major and a minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities. Combining these two subject interests, Marin says her work with SAM brought together the subject interests of her major with the hands-on and maker-oriented coursework of the Textual Studies minor. Going through classes which emphasized the physical aspects of texts, both visual and linguistic, helped inspire her to think more about the connections between artworks and their material forms, accessing the kinds of information that can be drawn from the histories of their creation. Culminating in her work at SAM, this internship allowed Marin to get closer than ever to the creation and life cycles of these paintings by delving in, hands-on, to the history of their materiality:
“Working with Tanya gave me a chance to engage with art in a way I had never experienced before. Interacting with the pieces physically allowed me to understand their materiality and connect with them, like more of their personality was revealed, and I could better understand the choices made by the artist.”
– Marin Tisdale
Textual Studies Courses in Book Arts
The Textual Studies Program offers a variety of courses and interdisciplinary electives that combine fields of study, including the histories of visual arts, book arts, and classes in hands-on bookmaking and printing. Our upcoming TXTDS 200 – Books Unbound: Gateway to Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, debuting this spring 2026, is a course that allows students to experiment hands-on with the forms and technologies that bring texts to life. Held in UW Special Collections, you’ll get to interact with rare books and manuscripts in the libraries’ collections, as well as try your hand at printing and book-making, learn about illustration techniques, and the processes of writing and inscription technologies.
Thank you to Marin for sharing this exciting internship experience with us! You can find out more about opportunities for undergraduate students in UW Textual Studies, our upcoming courses, or the undergraduate minor program and its requirements by exploring our website or by emailing text@uw.edu.
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