Connoisseur of American craftmanship

When Patricia Kane holds a piece of early American silver in her hand or gently opens the top of a Wethersfield chest with drawers, she often knows instantly where and when the objects were made and by whom. Her connoisseurship is over five decades in the making and is at the heart of her role as the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG).

“Looking at objects is a very important part of being a connoisseur,” said Pat, “but being able to touch them, to get a sense of surfaces, what their weight is, how they feel in the hand is also an important part of connoisseurship. Certainly, when you are working with three-dimensional objects, being able to examine them first by the hand and with your eyes is a two-part process that is critical and very illuminating.”

I think one of the most inspiring things about Yale is that you’re constantly working with young people. And they are always thinking in ways that compel you, almost through osmosis, to look at things differently, to keep in touch with the world, and to keep learning.

“I really admire the way in which Pat is the epitome of slow, careful looking,” said Edward Cooke, the Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts, in a tribute video for Pat. “It is such an experience to view a large piece of furniture or small piece of jewelry with her and watch the way she turns it over and looks at it to assess it not just visually, but also haptically, thinking of all the possible questions on how it might fit into context. It is a real treat to look at objects with her.”

Known for her scholarship — “one that is thorough and astonishingly free of ego or artifice,” says Antiques and Arts Weekly — Pat is also the author of or contributor to nine books. Notable among them are “Colonial Massachusetts Silversmiths and Jewelers,” and “Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture 1650–1830.” The latter received the Historic New England Book Prize and the Decorative Arts Society’s Charles F. Montgomery Prize. It accompanied a YUAG exhibition in 2016 and is the foundation of the Rhode Island Furniture Archive, a digital resource that continues to grow.

Discovering a hidden masterpiece

Pat’s carefully honed ability to assess objects was an asset during her research for “Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture 1650–1830,” and helped her make a discovery most curators dream about. It centered on one of the luminaries of Yale’s collection, a desk and bookcase once owned by Providence merchant John Brown. The maker of the item remained a mystery, however.

Piecing together clues — inscriptions, estate records, stylistic details, and construction techniques — Pat was able to figure out who the furniture maker was, and the result was surprising to many.

Through careful examination, Pat observed that the desk was slightly taller than those made in Newport. She and her team had also been studying marks used by furniture makers to identify the different parts as they built the pieces. As she recalled, “We’d been studying chalk and graphite marks of furniture makers and one, Daniel Spencer, had these peculiar little ones or “L’s” or “l’s ” in the front corners of his drawers.”

Pat and her team had not previously searched for the marks on the desk or bookcase, so one day after returning from several business trips, Pat and Jennifer Johnson, a Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow, scanned the desk and bookcase with an infrared camera.

“Sure enough,” Pat said, “There was that little mark I had seen before on a Spencer piece. When Jennifer held that camera up to me, I said, ‘Oh my God.’ It turns out that Spencer left Newport in 1772 and moved to Providence. I believe the desk and bookcase to be his work, and it was very exciting to get clarity on the different aesthetics in Newport versus Providence.”

This discovery, that Daniel Spencer, nephew of famed Newport furniture maker John Goddard, made the desk and bookcase for John Brown, lives in perpetuity in the annals of American decorative arts scholarship.

Wadsworth to Winterthur

Pat’s journey to decorative arts began when she was a teenager. She grew up in Bridgeport and later West Hartford, Connecticut, and her parents took her and her brother to Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. “I thought it was beautiful,” Pat said, “and I imagined working there.”

During a college internship at the Connecticut Historical Society, the director, noticing her work, encouraged Pat to apply to the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware. She was accepted as one of eight fellows, and after learning that the textile curator was unable to be her thesis advisor, Pat met with inaugural program director Charles F. Montgomery, one of the key figures in 20th-century decorative arts scholarship. He convinced her to write about 17th century Connecticut Valley furniture since her home was in the area and he was researching the subject, setting her on a course that would help define her career. “To this day,” said Pat, “I thank him for that suggestion and my ability to read very difficult seventeenth-century documents.”

Curator to Connoisseur

After graduating from the Winterthur Program, Pat was hired as an assistant curator at YUAG, one of the few women specializing in furniture in 1968. In 1970, Montgomery was named a professor of art history at Yale and curator of the Mabel Brady Garvan and Related Collections of American Art, allowing Pat to work alongside her former mentor. When Montgomery died suddenly in 1978, Pat became curator of American Decorative Arts. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale in 1987.

Today, with 45 years in her role as curator, Pat focuses her research on the tropical hardwood mahogany that 18th and 19th century British and American cabinetmakers favored. With guidance from Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and an outside furniture conservator, Pat aims to gain greater understanding of such prized cabinetmaking wood through state-of-the-art scientific analysis. This endeavor adds to her day-to-day responsibilities, including researching new acquisitions and writing companion proposals, meeting with colleagues, and discussing curatorial work with undergraduates.

In addition to her curatorial role, Pat has mentored countless graduate students and Marcia Brady Tucker Fellows who have gone on to top curatorial roles in American museums. “I think one of the most inspiring things about Yale,” says Pat, “is that you’re constantly working with young people. And they are always thinking in ways that compel you, almost through osmosis, to look at things differently, to keep in touch with the world, and to keep learning.”

Pat has played a key role in raising funds to endow her department, and when she chooses to step down, her position will be named Patricia E. Kane Curator of American Decorative Arts.