Professor DePhillips' work is in the area of art conservation, restoration, dating, and authentication. Each summer he teaches a course in conservation science in Rome, Italy, which involved visits to ongoing and current conservation sites. His courses frequently address such questions as: What is restoration/conservation? Who makes the decision to work on a piece in need of repair? What information is needed to insure that the conservation work will yield the desired result? What is the desired result?

In addition to his work at Trinity College, Professor DePhillips is a conservation scientist working primarily with the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT and, for two to three months in the fall, at one of the national conservation laboratories in Rome. He specializes in the analysis of materials from all types of art media: paintings, ceramics, metal, cloth, and wood. Professor DePhillips’ recent work includes an authentication and attribution study — the analysis of pigment and medium in a sixteenth-century Italian cartoon — and a dating and informational study — composition analysis of twenty-two bronze Greek statues.  He has also worked on projects in Herculaneum, from Korea and China.