2025 CMF Award Recipients

2025 Neuerburg Award Recipient
Jack Clark Robinson, O.F.M.

I am incredibly honored and reluctantly willing to accept this award as an individual in recognition of a group – my brothers, the Franciscan friars of California. Over the last thirty-nine years, I have taught Franciscan friars and others about Franciscan history in initial formation programs, at St. Bonaventure University in New York, the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX, and the Franciscan School of Theology in San Diego, CA, along with short stints in Australia and Singapore. I consider it among my greatest accomplishments to have led people in prayer in Colonial Era Franciscan Missions in Georgia, Texas, and New Mexico, as well as California.

Along the way I have been blessed to serve my brothers as Minister Provincial of the Franciscan province in New Mexico and Arizona from 2014 to 2020 and chair the initial Commission and the Ministers Provincial as we united the members of six Franciscan Provinces here in the United States into one Province coast to coast in 2023. I have been a member of the Academy of American Franciscan History since 2008 and served as its chairman for five years. My work as an administrator continues as Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Mission Archive-Library, where I have the privilege of working with a Board that includes John Johnson, the first recipient of this Award and has included: Rose Marie Beebe, Robert Senkewicz, Doyce B. Nunis, Jr., Msgr. Francis J. Weber, and Robert L. Hoover. At the Archive-Library, the splendid staff: Andrew Walsh, Laura Bang, Lee Neomi Leal-Ramirez, and I have the great privilege of welcoming scholars and researchers, from the rigorously academic to the casually curious with great joy as we work to continue to preserve and make accessible this Franciscan slice of California Mission history.


2025 Edna Kimbro Recipient
Patty West

Patty West is the Director of South Coast Fine Arts Conservation Center in Santa Barbara, California. She has been a conservator for the past 45 years. After completing two degrees in Fine Arts, she soon landed an internship in art conservation. For the first 28 years she worked with fellow conservator and longtime CMF member Carol Kenyon. In 2010, after Carol’s retirement, becoming the Owner/director Patty is a Professional Associate at the American Institute for conservators and the Western Association of Art Conservators. She
has been a long-time member of CMF.

In 1980, shortly after beginning her career, Dr. Norman Neuerburg walked into the conservation studio seeking help with a project at Mission San Juan Capistrano, a statue of San Raphael that he found in pieces in the attic of the Mission. That one project led to the next 45 years of conservation work at the Missions. An achievement that has been an honor and for which the studio takes great pride.

South Coast Fine Arts has worked for 16 of the California Missions, restoring paintings,
polychrome wooden statues, tabernacles, altars, wall paintings, pulpits, old crypts, a reredos
and various other artifacts. The studio is proud to have worked on all known surviving artwork created by indigenous Indians living at the Missions.

Over the years, Patty has given several presentations on the conservation of Mission Art in hopes of educating others on the beautiful art contained within the Missions. Patty and
co-author Tina Foss, Emeritus at Mission Santa Barbara, have written a manuscript on the
History and Conservation of California Mission Art and are in the process of finding a publisher.


2025 Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient
John R. Johnson, Ph.D.

 

Dr. John Johnson served 37 years as Curator of Anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and since retirement in 2023 holds the position of Curator Emeritus. He taught an anthropology course on Indigenous Peoples of California Indians for eighteen years at UCSB. Dr. Johnson has long been engaged in research using mission records. He has served on the board of directors of the Santa Bárbara Mission Archive-Library since 1993 and is current board president. His written contributions include more than 100 studies regarding the cultures, history, and ancient past of California’s Indigenous peoples, especially emphasizing the Chumash Indians of the Santa Barbara region. In 2000, he was the first recipient of CMF’s prestigious Norman Neuerburg Award.