Coffee pot, silver, wood; 12 1/8 x 6 x 10 in. (30.8 x 15.2 x 25.4 cm); Daniel Christian Fueter (Swiss, 1720–1785), circa 1765. Brooklyn Museum, bequest of Samuel E. Haslett. © Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2012.
Upcoming programs
The Decorative Arts Society, Inc. (DAS) is pleased to offer this special event for our contributors.
A Curator-Led Tour of
Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art
at the Brooklyn Museum:
Thursday, Jan. 23, at 4 p.m. (Eastern time)
Join Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts Liz St. George and Assistant Curator of American Art Caroline Gillaspie for a curator-led tour of Toward Joy: New Frameworks for American Art.
How might American art be experienced at this moment? In honor of the Brooklyn Museum’s 200th anniversary, a transformative reinstallation of the American art galleries reorients, through Black feminist and BIPOC perspectives, the ways that the Brooklyn Museum exhibits — and audiences rediscover — this collection.
A display of more than 400 works offers interactions with millennia of art. In each of eight galleries is a thought-provoking framework inspired by the contributions of historically marginalized cultural producers. Every space is a distinct encounter with the collection, from the bloom-covered walls in “To Give Flowers” to the contemplative respite of “A Quiet Place,” to the chance to strut the runway before an audience of seated portraits in “Several Seats.”
Coffee pot, silver, wood; 12 1/8 x 6 x 10 in. (30.8 x 15.2 x 25.4 cm); Daniel Christian Fueter (Swiss, 1720–1785), circa 765. Brooklyn Museum, bequest of Samuel E. Haslett. © Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2012.
Date: Thursday, January 23, 2025
Time: Be sure to arrive at 3:45 p.m. — the tour will begin promptly at 4 p.m.
Location: Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, NY 11238
Meet inside the main entrance.
Cost: $14 per person
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Limited to 15 DAS contributors on a first-come, first-served basis.
Contact DAS Board Member Margi Hofer with any questions:
margi.hofer@gmail.com
If you are interested in becoming a DAS contributor, visit our website: http://www.decartssociety.org/support/ or contact info@decartssociety.org for more information.
Please note that changes may occur in the program beyond the control of the Decorative Arts Society. The Decorative Arts Society, its officers and its directors, individually and/or otherwise, and cooperating organizations and individuals have no liability or responsibility whatsoever for this event, nor for any acts or omissions of others in connection therewith, and shall in no event be under any liability or responsibility whatsoever for the injury or death of any person or any loss, expense, delay, injury, or other damage to any person or property occurring on, during, or in relation to the event, or any change in the schedule or cancellation of the event. Reservation of a place for the event will constitute acceptance of these terms.
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Making Home: The Smithsonian Design Triennial
Cooper Hewitt, New York, NY
Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 5 p.m. (Eastern time)
Christina De León, associate curator of U.S. Latino design at the Cooper Hewitt, will lead a tour of Making Home: The Smithsonian Design Triennial, showcasing an iteration of the site-specific installations commissioned for the exhibition.
Details and registration information to come.
Installation of “Living Room, Orlean, Virginia” by Hugh Hayden, Davóne Tines and Zack Winokur, in "Making Home — Smithsonian Design Triennial" at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution.
Decorative Arts Society, Inc. presents awards and prize for outstanding contributions to scholarship
The Decorative Arts Society, Inc. (DAS) recognized scholarly works produced in 2023 by presenting its Charles F. Montgomery Prize and Award and Robert C. Smith Award on November 12, 2024, at the Explorer’s Club in New York, NY. Recipients were chosen after careful review of numerous worthy and laudable publications submitted for consideration.
The Charles F. Montgomery Prize is presented to the most distinguished contribution to the study of American decorative arts published in the English language by a North American scholar in a given year. The 2023 recipient, A Dark, a Light, a Bright: The Designs of Dorothy Liebes (New York, NY: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2023), was produced in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name. It is edited by Susan Brown, associate curator and acting head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt, and Alexa Griffith Winton, Cooper Hewitt’s manager of content and curriculum, with contributions by John Stuart Gordon, Emily M. Orr, Monica Penick, Erica Warren and Leigh Wishner. This groundbreaking publication sheds new light on the story and consequential legacy of textile innovator Dorothy Liebes and her influential studio.
The Charles F. Montgomery Award honors the scholar whose first major publication in the field of North American decorative arts is judged the most outstanding such work published in a given year. The 2023 winner is Embroidering the Landscape: Art, Women and the Environment in British North America, 1740–1770 (London: Lund-Humphries, 2023) by Dr. Andrea Pappas, professor of art and art history at Santa Clara University. Pappas re-examines some of the most iconic needlework from colonial North America: the embroidered landscapes produced in New England in the mid-18th century. She contextualizes the needlework within the broader landscape tradition, revealing how these works communicate women’s knowledge of and engagement with their environment as it was transformed through colonization.
The Robert C. Smith Award recognizes the best article or essay in the field of decorative arts published in English in a given year. The 2023 winning essay is “‘Threads & Clues of it’: Thomas Jefferson’s New York Furniture,” by Diane Ehrenpreis, curator of decorative arts and historic interiors at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, published in American Furniture (Chipstone Foundation, 2023). Beginning with a humble packing list, the article paints a fascinating picture of Jefferson’s New York furnishings. This thoughtfully researched, revelatory essay reminds readers of the performative role furniture can play.
The Smith Award Committee also gave an honorable mention to Edward Cooke, Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts at Yale University, for his article “Eco-Aesthetics as an Organizing Principle in Global Material Culture: The Example of Green Woodworking,” published in Winterthur Portfolio (Summer/Autumn 2023). This essay encourages readers to question why objects made from wood look the way they do, taking into consideration environmental ethics and the interconnections between humans and nature.
Photos from the awards event and further details about the winning publications and their authors are in the fall 2024 issue of the DAS newsletter. The newsletter is a benefit of being a DAS contributor.
For more information about the awards, see www.decartssociety.org/awards. Suggestions, recommendations or submissions of books and articles published in 2024 to be considered for the 2025 DAS awards can be sent to DAS Publication Awards Chair Medill Harvey at medill.harvey@metmuseum.org or DAS President Amy Dehan at amy.dehan@cincyart.org.
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The Decorative Arts Society, Inc. (DAS) is pleased to offer occasional special events for our contributors.
Watch your mail and this space for announcements of new tours and other events.
If you have any questions, contact DAS Board Member Margi Hofer at
margi.hofer@gmail.com
If you are interested in becoming a DAS contributor, visit the Support section of our website: http://www.decartssociety.org/support/ or contact info@decartssociety.org for more information.
Decorative Arts Society, Inc.
http://www.decartssociety.org/
Past programs
Whistle and Bells, gold and coral. Made 1761–1765 by Daniel Christopher Feuter (American, born Switzerland, 1720–1785) for Mary Duane North. Mabel Brady Garvan Collection; gift of Mrs. Francis P. Garvan, James R. Graham, Walter M. Jeffords and Mrs. Paul Moore, 1942.
A Private Tour of the Special Exhibition
Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power
Saturday, April 23, 2022, at the Yale University Art Gallery
Led by John Stuart Gordon, Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts
For millennia, gold’s glow, resistance to corrosion and rarity have made it a preferred material for objects meant to convey prestige, authority or devotion. Drawing on the Yale University Art Gallery’s holdings of American gold and augmented by paintings, photographs and other works of art, Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power was the gallery’s first exhibition since 1963 to survey the role of gold in American art and culture.
The exhibition featured more than 70 examples of gold and related material, with objects spanning more than 400 years, such as early colonial betrothal and mourning rings; a Gilded Age coffee service by Tiffany and Company; rare coins made from ore mined during the Gold Rush; a pair of shoe buckles from the late-18th century reflecting the wealth derived from the slave trade in the Caribbean; and works by contemporary artists who explore the medium’s historical associations, as well as the environmental and human costs of its extraction from the earth.
