Jenrette Foundation convenes decorative arts leaders on key challenges and frontiers for stewardship
Author: William Richards, Ph.D.
The Jenrette Foundation convened experts in the American decorative arts, offering the opportunity to explore stewardship, interdisciplinary, and the critical educational and labor issues driving collections management, public programming, and scholarship in the near- and long-term. At the podium, Daniel Ackerman, Director of Bayou Bend Gardens and Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, asked attendees to consider a series of provocative questions including, ““What is original? What is reappraisal? What is interpretation? What is heritage?”
The first in a series, this State of American Decorative Arts will generate a report. If you are interested in receiving advance notice of its publication, please sign up or email connect@jenrette.org.
On Wednesday, January 22, the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation convened the leading curators, collections directors, and museum heads for its inaugural State of American Decorative Arts to conduct a pulse check and identify common challenges facing the nation’s most prestigious institutions.
The convening, held at the Century Association, designed by McKim, Mead, and White and completed in 1891, offered the opportunity to explore stewardship, interdisciplinary, and the critical educational and labor issues driving collections management, public programming, and scholarship in the near- and long-term.
“The questions we’re raising are about illuminating the past while also suggesting a future for American decorative arts,” said Jenrette Foundation President Benjamin Prosky, “and the Jenrette Foundation’s desire for this convening was to consult with some of the leading curators and institutions in the field, to understand some of the current questions this group is facing as they explore new ways to exhibit and collect objects, and ultimately tell the stories about these objects that resonate with a broad range of publics.”
Prosky added, “The thoughtful discussions at this convening inform the Jenrette Foundation as we create additional educational opportunities with our own collection, while also seeking to broaden its partnerships and grant making in the decorative arts.”
“Connoisseurship might seem like an outmoded word, but it remains a viable concept that reflects an important professional identity based in critical judgement and care,” said Grant Quertermous, Curator and Director of Collections for the Jenrette Foundation, in his opening remarks. “Access and scholarship are generative areas that fuel the American decorative arts, both with their own practical and creative sides.”
Jenrette Foundation President Benjamin Prosky (at left) opened by touching on the “broad range of publics” that institutions routinely engage to interpret the often complicated histories of objects. Ruthie Dibble (center) the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, spoke at length about the tension between a collection’s original point of view and contemporary missions to think more inclusively about other points of view. “One way to put it is thinking expansively means not just being fearless in asking new questions of established fields, but asking new questions about established narratives,” said Dennis Carr (at right), the Huntington’s Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator. “Those stories are already embedded in the objects we hold.”
Offering their perspectives, representatives from the Bard Graduate Center, the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, Historic New England, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Huntington outlined their experiences—and hopes—for the future.
“Regardless of the material or object we’re talking about, overlaying the tenets of connoisseurship and the capabilities of technology is not just the project of the 21st century, but the imperative for all scholars,” said John Stuart Gordon, the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery. Gordon, in his presentation about how chemically evaluating the tropical wood mahogany in historic furniture can upend scholarship on individual pieces, their collections, and their collectors.
Revisiting assumptions was at the heart of Dennis Carr’s presentation on the evolution in categorical thinking from “American art” to an “art of the Americas.” Carr, the Huntington’s Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator, said it is a question of framing. “One way to put it is thinking expansively means not just being fearless in asking new questions of established fields, but asking new questions about established narratives. Those stories are already embedded in the objects we hold.”
“This is an exciting time for the field of the American decorative arts,” said Carr, “and as we’ve evolved from being exclusionary to being inclusionary in our scopes, the decorative arts have thrived.”
For Mya Rose Bailey, a graduate student at the Bard Graduate Center, who spoke about recovering multisensory experiences at Monticello and Poplar Forest, asking new questions about the decorative arts means asking new questions about their environments.
“What do we have to gain by situating objects in their original states?” asked Bailey, before exploring the two-faced Great Clock in Monticello’s entry hall. Inside the hall, the clock uniquely marked minutes, hours, and days of the week, integral to both Jefferson’s 18th century scientific inquiries and his desire to create a home that was, in and of itself, a scientific instrument. Outside the hall, facing the southwest lawn, the clock’s gong tolled hourly for enslaved workers, what Bailey called Jefferson’s “strict temporal imposition” heard from as far as six miles away.
Presenters expanded the discussion with panel discussions that focused on a range of issues from the professional pipeline, education, and the diverse backgrounds supported by the decorative arts professions. Pictured (L-R): Jenrette Foundation President Benjamin Prosky; Bard Graduate Center student Mya Rose Bailey; the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen; the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University John Stuart Gordon; and the Hugh F. McKean Curator at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art Kayli Rideout.
Daniel Ackerman, Director of Bayou Bend Gardens and Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, raised another kind of duality that curators and scholars face in the larger enterprise of public education. “Houses, museums, and houses that become museums are all different things—each with their own evolutions and public perceptions,” said Ackerman, mapped onto more existential questions, such as, in his “What is original? What is reprisal? What is interpretation? What is heritage?”
These questions, and others, still form the foundation of new frontiers, such as visible storage for public view, as presented by Erica Lome, Curator of Collections at Historic New England; how we integrate new and news ideas about grouping collections, as presented by David Barquist, the H. Richard Dietrich, Jr., Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; how we can be inclusive in welcoming different points of view about collections that began with one point of view decades ago, as presented by Ruthie Dibble, the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum; and the importance of continually surveying collections to recover attributions that are in danger of being lost, as presented by Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen, the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“There are cultural and economic forces driving changes in interpretation and collecting, which come to bear on exhibition attendance and even the desire to be inclusive in our investigations and scholarship,” said Kevin Cherry, Vice President of the Jenrette Foundation,” and they are fundamental to how we determine success for our institutions.”
Later this year, the Jenrette Foundation will issue a report based, in part, on this snapshot. If you are interested in receiving advance notice of its publication, please sign up or email connect@jenrette.org.
The series will continue in June 2025 with a convening titled “The State of Historic Preservation,” assembling representatives from a range of degree programs in historic preservation, with a second forthcoming report in fall of 2025.