Campus & Community
The University Museum is pleased to announce Madeleine Thomas as the 2022-23 Louise ’44 and Bernard Palitz Art Scholar. The Palitz Graduate Art Scholar Endowed Fund was founded in 2011 by longtime museum advocates Louise Beringer Palitz and Bernard Palitz to support outstanding Syracuse University graduate students in art history and/or museum studies. Recipients are known as Paritz Art Scholars for their achievements and potential in the fields of art history and/or museum studies.
Madeleine Thomas
Thomas (She/She) is a third-year graduate student pursuing a back-to-back Master’s Degree in Art History and Museum Studies. She graduated with a BA in Art History from the University of Arkansas in 2019 with a minor in Global Studies. She currently works as her assistant referee at the Syracuse University Library’s Special Collections Research Center and the Collections Department of the Everson Museum of Art. Her research concentrates on the illumination of medieval manuscripts and the complex visual and textual narratives of Europe’s collective cultural heritage and heritage.
As a Palitz Art Scholar, Thomas is currently developing a pilot project for hyperspectral imaging of medieval manuscripts on campus. In digital archaeology and art preservation, the non-invasive digital techniques she plans to use can reveal hidden materials, pigments and inks invisible to the naked eye. This can be used by researchers as evidence to discuss art, literature, and how art is studied. Religions developed together during the Middle Ages.
