SAINT MARY’S UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
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“I collect postcards, and I had a colored one that showed the chapel’s ceiling before all the soot and coal. You could tell the difference immediately,” he recalled. Kierlin (and his wife Mary Burrichter) worked with members of Saint Mary’s and MACC to make the restoration project a reality. According to Kierlin, the effort goes back to 1991, when the Hiawatha Education Foundation purchased the Saint Teresa Campus. In the early ’90s, amidst the sale and renovations of many of the Saint Teresa buildings, Kierlin said he and Burrichter, knew the chapel needed to be preserved and restored to its former glory, but the method eluded them. “We didn’t know how to preserve it, and thought for years about what to do,” Kierlin said. According to Kierlin and Burrichter, during their years of collecting artwork, they met conservators who they thought might know what to do. In March
of 2018, the time came for the restoration to get moving. Several members of the Midwest Art Conservation Center were visiting Winona for an event at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum when Kierlin and Burrichter asked them for their thoughts. “I asked them to take a look at the chapel and come up with some idea of what can be done. Megan Emery stayed down overnight and looked at the mosaics and altar, and came up with a plan,” Kierlin explained. Emery is the chief conservator and senior objects conservator for MACC, which is a Minneapolisbased nonprofit conservation lab specializing in the restoration and revitalization of classic art. “After having Megan Emery test clean some of the elevated stone and mosaics with the help of a high lift supplied by the Schwab Company, we agreed to finance the project,” Kierlin said. “The scaffolding that accommodated up to nine restorers
The process removed decades of dirt and soot from the beautiful marble sculptures, the copperdomed altar, and the intricate mosaic work.