Kathleen Eagen Johnson (M.A. Winterthur Museum Program, University of Delaware; B.A. Syracuse University) is the Curator and Director of Collections for Historic Hudson Valley, a major regional history museum that administers six historic sites spanning four centuries. Kate has worked in the curatorial department of Historic Hudson Valley, formerly Sleepy Hollow Restorations, since 1978, and has served as Curator since 1993.
Kate Johnson has written on a variety of subjects including the history of American decorative arts, art, architecture, landscape design, and graphic design as well as the state of the museum field. Her solo publications include exhibition catalogs, guidebooks, articles, and book and exhibition reviews. She has also served as a contributor to several books including the standard text for American furniture study, The Field Guide to American Antique Furniture, with Joseph T. Butler (hardcover, Facts on File, 1985 and soft cover, Henry Holt/Owl Books, 1986. The soft cover has gone through 14 printings.)
She has lectured across the country on these subjects. She has addressed the international meeting of the International Committee of Museums and the national meetings of the American Association of Museums, American Association of State and Local History, and the American Society of Appraisers. Other lecture venues include University of Texas at Austin, Cornell University, Colonial Williamsburg, Historic Deerfield, Baltimore Museum of Art, Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art, Boston Athenaeum, and the University Club. Kate has also appeared on television (PBS’s America’s Castles and WNBC’s The Mighty Hudson), on radio, and has been featured in The New York Times, Early American Life, and Arts and the Antiques Weekly among other magazines and newspapers.
Johnson has researched the Hudson-Fulton Celebration and its historical and artistic implications for two decades and has lectured on the topic at conferences. As part of her long and burning interest in the topic, Kate has amassed an extensive collection of Hudson-Fulton Celebration commemorative publications and souvenirs which will serve as the core of the book’s illustrations. Kate likes to echo Washington Irving’s well-known quote “Thank God I was born on the banks of the Hudson!” Born and raised in Columbia County, she left the Hudson Valley to attend college and graduate school, returning to work for the Tarrytown-based museum now called Historic Hudson Valley. For over twenty years she and her husband Greg have lived in Peekskill. On weekends, they like to canoe on the Hudson and Croton Rivers and hike in the Highlands. Kate has recently been appointed to the United States Senate Curatorial Advisory Board. The Board is responsible for advising and assisting the United States Senate Commission on Art in acquiring, preserving, and displaying documents and artifacts that are of historical importance to the Senate wing of the Capitol and the Senate office buildings. Kate Johnson 314 Depew Street Peekskill, NY 10566 (914) 631-8200 x636