Carol Mancusi-Ungaro serves as the Associate Director Emerita, Conservation and Research, at the Whitney Museum of American Art and was the Founding Director of the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums.

Previously she served as Chief Conservator of The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. During that time, she founded the Artists Documentation Program wherein she interviews artists about the technical nature of their art ( adp.menil.org ). She has contributed to monographs on Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, among other artists, and co-authored the catalogue raisonné of Barnett Newman.

In 2004 she received the College Art Association/Heritage Preservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship and Conservation, and in 2009 she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, marking the Academy’s first recognition of art conservation. In January 2016 her work was featured in a New Yorker profile entitled “The Custodians.” In 2016 she was awarded the Forbes Prize by the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works and in 2021-2022 she was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy in Rome.

She continues to engage in research documenting the materials and techniques of living artists as well as other issues pertaining to the conservation of modern art.