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Leona, Marco
Foreign Fellows
Elected: 2023
Email: marco.leona [@] metmuseum.org
Profile
David H. Koch Scientist del Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Marco Leona is the Head of the Department of Scientific Research at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He completed his studies in Italy with a Laurea in Chimica and a PhD in Crystallography and Mineralogy from Universita’ degli Studi di Pavia.
Prior to joining the Metropolitan Museum Dr Leona worked at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and at the Los Angeles County Museum Art LACMA. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he supervises a team of twenty scientists conducting research on artists’ materials and techniques, and on art conservation. From 2009 to 2021 he taught scientific methods to art conservation students as Research Professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Art.
Dr. Leona’s research interests include the study of Japanese painting techniques and materials, and the application of Surface Enhanced Raman spectroscopy to the analysis of natural and synthetic dyes. Dr. Leona’s work on surface-enhanced Raman scattering has been published in Angewandte Chemie, Analytical Chemistry, PNAS, Accounts of Chemical Research, and the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy.
Dr. Leona was the co-chair, with Rick Van Duyne, of the 2009 Mellon-NSF workshop on Chemistry and Materials Research at the Interface between Science and Art, and the co-chair, with Heinz-Eberhard Mahnke of the first Gordon Research Conference on Scientific Methods in Cultural Heritage Research, in 2012.