The intersection of art and science

As Mount Holyoke College’s Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Liora Mael studies the chemistry of museum environments. Her research focuses on how wildfire smoke interacts with cultural heritage at both the macroscale and microscale. Mael’s work tackles a complex, timely question at the intersection of fine arts and science: How can museums protect their collections in an age of increased environmental threat while reducing the cost of that protection?

Museums rely on precise standards for temperature, humidity and air quality, but maintaining these conditions requires a significant amount of energy. At the same time, climate change creates new and more frequent threats. By measuring energy use and particulate matter inside museums, Mael helps institutions improve their protective measures safely while reducing energy consumption. On a smaller scale, Mael also examines what happens when smoke settles on the surfaces of artworks.

After the wildfires in Southern California, she consulted with museums dealing with smoke produced by burning plants and trees, cars, buildings and materials found at the wildland–urban interface. Mael explains that smoke particles can change the surface chemistry of an artwork, altering how it ages, complicating its treatment and interpretation and posing health concerns for future art conservators.

Mael’s path to this field began with an interest in both science and art. In high school, she planned on a career as a physician, but she also loved her bookbinding and papermaking classes. When her sister suggested she could become a “book doctor,” Mael began exploring art conservation.

At Oberlin College, she set out to study art history and biology, with the goal of becoming a conservator. When she fell into chemistry, she found that it made intuitive sense of the way she experienced the world and her interest in art.

Encouraged by her Oberlin chemistry professor to conduct summer research, Mael expanded her path into atmospheric chemistry, sea-spray aerosol, ice cloud formation and wildfire smoke. These interests converged during her postdoctoral fellowship in art conservation at the University of Delaware and Winterthur Museum.

Today, Mael continues to engage with art by observing how objects are made and how their surfaces change. Among the works she finds herself returning to is “Cadence,” Otobong Nkanga’s 2024 Museum of Modern Art multimedia installation that explores relationships among people, land, natural materials and the turbulent rhythms of nature and society.

Mael wants her Mount Holyoke students to find their own connections to chemistry, hoping they will use the discipline as a tool to help make sense of the world and what they find important in it. This year, she is teaching General Chemistry in the fall and Analytical Chemistry in the spring; these larger courses attract students from a range of academic fields. Mael’s classes emphasize conversation, problem-solving and experimentation. “This is a place to try something, to break an instrument and learn how to fix it, to get the wrong answer, and even to watch me get it wrong sometimes,” she observes. By making room for mistakes and collective learning, she hopes to replace fear with curiosity.

Mael chose Mount Holyoke because she saw curiosity in the students. She was drawn to the department’s collaborative culture and to a campus where women and gender-diverse students in science, technology, engineering and math could show up as themselves and be celebrated.

Outside her research and teaching, Mael is an open-water and masters swimmer. She also quilts and sews, and she is considering adding woodworking to her hobbies now that her South Hadley home includes a small studio.