The Decorative Arts in the White House Symposium Scholarly Contributors

James Archer Abbott

James Archer Abbott currently serves as the Executive Director of the Lewes Historical Society in Lewes, Delaware. A graduate of Vassar College and the State University of New York/FIT, he has previously served as a museum director and/or curator for Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum & Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Boscobel House and Gardens, Historic Hudson Valley, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Among his publications is Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration, which he co-authored with Elaine Rice Bachmann and which will be reissued by the WHHA and Winterthur in 2021.

William Allman

William Allman served in the Office of the Curator of the White House for 41 years, the last 15 years as the Curator until his retirement in June 2017. He is the author of the 2016 edition of Official White House China From the 18th to the 21st Centuries and co-author of Something of Splendor, Decorative Arts from the White House (to accompany a 2012 exhibition at the Renwick Gallery), both published by the White House Historical Association.

Elaine Rice Bachmann

Elaine Rice Bachmann is the Deputy State Archivist of Maryland, and Secretary of the State House Trust. A graduate of Indiana University, she received her master’s degree from the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware. She is the co-author of Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration, with James A. Abbott, which will be published in a new edition in 2021 by the WHHA and Winterthur. She is also the co-author of a history of Maryland’s governor’s mansion published in 2018, and a children’s book on the Wye Oak published in 2006.

Katharine “Kathy” P. Booth

Katharine “Kathy” P. Booth was elected as a trustee of Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library in 2008 and has served as Chair of the Board since 2014. She is the first woman to hold this role at Winterthur and is dedicated to furthering the vision of the institution’s founder, Henry Francis du Pont.

Kathy is also a member of the American Art Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Bryant Fellows of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past board experience includes Canterbury Shaker Village, Hamilton College, and the New York State Historical Association. In addition, she has been deeply involved with The Philadelphia Antiques Show, co-curating five of the loan exhibitions.

In 2011 Kathy and her husband, Dr. Robert Booth, received the Francis Anne Wister Award, bestowed by the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks. The Booths are among the nation’s most celebrated collectors of Shaker furniture and artifacts, American folk art, American cast iron penny banks, and Pennsylvania German decorative arts and ceramics.

In her spare time, Kathy enjoys collecting and researching American decorative arts and American folk art from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, as well as lending to various museum exhibitions.

Carol Cadou

Carol Cadou is the Charles F. Montgomery Director and CEO of Winterthur Museum. She assumed her role in May of 2018, after serving George Washington’s Mount Vernon for nineteen years—first as Curator and most recently as Senior Vice President for Historic Preservation and Collections.

Prior to Mount Vernon, Carol was the Curator for the Maryland State Art Collection in Annapolis and the Curator of Education and Interpretation at Historic Charleston Foundation. Carol is a graduate of Wellesley College, the Sotheby’s American Arts Course, and the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, a master’s degree offered in conjunction with the University of Delaware. Her publications range from The Installation of Historic Architecture at Winterthur Museum to The George Washington Collection: Fine and Decorative Arts at Mount Vernon. Carol’s latest book, Stewards of Memory: The Past, Present, and Future of Historic Preservation at George Washington’s Mount Vernon was released this year.

Wendy A. Cooper

Wendy A. Cooper is Curator Emerita of furniture at Winterthur Museum following two decades as senior curator of furniture. A graduate of BrownUniversity, with an M.A. from the Winterthur Program, University of Delaware, she has worked at The Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Colonial Williamsburg, and has guest curated four exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art. Before coming to Winterthur in 1995 she was Curator of Decorative Arts at the Baltimore Museum of Art where she organized the traveling exhibition Classical Taste in America, 1800-1840, with the accompanying book. In 2011 she organized the groundbreaking exhibition Paint, Pattern, and People: Furniture of Southeastern Pennsylvania, 1725-1850 at Winterthur. She is now a consultant, researcher, writer, and lecturer, and serves on museum committees and boards including The Committee for the Preservation of the White House.

Matthew Costello

Matthew Costello joined the Association in November 2016 after completing his Ph.D. and M.A. in American history at Marquette University. He received his B.A. in history and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He previously worked on the George Washington Bibliography Project for the George Washington Papers at the University of Virginia. He has received research fellowships from Marquette University, the Virginia Historical Society, the United States Capitol Historical Society, and the Fred W. Smith National Library at Mount Vernon. He has published articles in The Journal of History and Cultures, Essays in History, The Dome, and White House History. His book, The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President was published by University Press of Kansas in fall 2019. Matthew also teaches a course on White House history at American University.

Marcee Craighill

Marcee Craighill is Director and Curator of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, Department of State. In this capacity, she is responsible for the suite of 42 period-style rooms in which the Secretary of State, President, Vice President, and Members of the Cabinet meet with and entertain official guests. The rooms contain an outstanding collection of 5,000 American fine and decorative arts of the 18th and early 19th centuries. They are among the most important examples of Americana in the world, valued at more than $125 million.

From 2010-2011, Marcee helped lead a successful campaign to raise $20 million to create the first permanent endowment ensuring that the Diplomatic Reception Rooms and the collection continue to foster diplomacy at the highest levels for generations to come. In 2013, she received the Department of State’s Distinguished Honor Award.

Marcee and her team are currently focused on utilizing the Diplomatic Rooms, their historic collection, and the diplomatic work that occurs in the rooms each day as teaching tools to share our country’s history, culture and diplomatic work with educators and students around the world.

Marcee is also responsible for the collection of American and English fine and decorative arts at The Blair House, the President’s Guest House.

Marcee is a native Californian and graduate of Stanford University. She received a Master of Arts in the History of Decorative Arts from Parsons School of Design with a focus on eighteenth century American decorative arts.

Catharine Dann Roeber

Catharine Dann Roeber is the Brock W. Jobe Associate Professor of Decorative Arts and Material Culture at Winterthur. She is also the Executive Editor of the Winterthur Portfolio, an interdisciplinary journal of American material culture and is Director of Winterthur’s Visiting Research Fellowship Program. She is co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies and has curated and co-curated exhibitions and gallery installations including Truths of the Trade: Slavery and the Winterthur Collection, Bein’ Green: The History of a Color, Table Talk: Philadelphia in the New Nation and the upcoming 2021 exhibit Upcycled!: Transforming Design at Winterthur.

Marie-Stephanie Delamaire

Marie-Stephanie Delamaire is the Associate Curator of Fine Arts at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, and an affiliated Assistant Professor in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. Dr. Delamaire is a specialist of nineteenth-century American painting, print technology and the art market. She has published essays and curated exhibitions on American genre paintings, cartoons, and the transatlantic publishing industry. Her research has received awards from as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Library of Congress. Her current projects include Circulation and Control, a book on the intersection of American art and the law, and Caribbean Bound, an exhibition on eighteenth-century colonial painting and the West Indies.

Brock Jobe

Brock Jobe was appointed professor of American decorative arts in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture after a 28-year career as a museum curator and administrator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Colonial Williamsburg, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England), and Winterthur. He retired from his professorship in June 2015, but retains an office at Winterthur and continues to study, write, and lecture about American furniture.

Francis G. Kalista

In 1982, after completing a ten-year apprenticeship at the Baltimore upholstery firm Willard and Hierstetter, Francis G. Kalista founded Kalista Furniture Design and Restoration. Pursuing his life-long interest in antique furniture and fine art, Kalista continuously researched 18th and 19th century upholstery techniques of hand stitching and sculpting interior foundations. In 1998, Kalista started working for the National Park Service as an independent contractor. With the expert guidance of Park Service furniture conservator John Courtney, Kalista and Courtney developed unique methods of non-intrusive upholstery techniques necessary to maintain an historic collection that endures daily use. Kalista attended Maryland Institute and Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore.

Stewart D. McLaurin

Stewart D. McLaurin, as president of the White House Historical Association since 2014, leads the Association’s non-profit and non-partisan mission to support conservation and preservation at the White House with non-government funding. Under his leadership, the Association has expanded greatly in mission reach and impact; fundraising results; educational public programming, and award-winning publications that teach the story of White House history; and related retail offerings inspired by history. For more than 35 years, McLaurin has held leadership roles with national non-profit and higher education organizations such as the American Red Cross, Georgetown University, and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

Melissa Naulin

Melissa Naulin is Associate Curator of Decorative Arts at The White House. She joined the Office of the Curator in 2003 after having served as Assistant Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. She has also worked in the curatorial offices of Winterthur Museum and Strong Museum. She holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture through the University of Delaware and a bachelor of arts degree from Smith College. Her recent projects at the White House have included overseeing the restoration of the 1817 French suite of furniture in the Blue Room and reevaluating the origins of the China Room in an article for the White House History Quarterly.

Frederick J. Ryan Jr.

Frederick J. Ryan, Jr. is the Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of The Washington Post. Previously he was co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Politico.

From 1989 until 1995, he served as Chief of Staff to former President Ronald Reagan. He was responsible for overseeing all of President Reagan’s activities including domestic and international issues, government relations, political affairs and public relations. He served as President Reagan’s personal representative in numerous meetings with Heads of State around the world, as well as leaders of the international business community.

Mr. Ryan serves as Chairman of the White House Historical Association and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation. He serves on the Boards of several other nonprofit organizations including the University of Southern California, Ford’s Theatre, The National Geographic Society, National Geographic Partners, and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

He is author of Wine in the White House, published by the White House Historical Association in 2020.

Tom Savage

Tom Savage is Director of External Affairs at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. A native of The Eastern Shore of Virginia, Mr. Savage is a graduate of St. Andrew's School, The College of William and Mary, and received his MA in History Museum Studies from The Cooperstown Graduate Program. He was formerly Curator and Director of Museums for Historic Charleston Foundation in South Carolina and Senior Vice President and Director of Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York. He is the author of The Charleston Interior and numerous articles on British and Southern decorative arts. At the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, he co-curated the exhibition In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad. He is a former member of The Committee for the Preservation of The White House.

Colleen Shogan

Colleen Shogan joined the Association in the winter of 2020 after almost fifteen years of federal government service. She previously worked in the United States Senate and as a senior executive at the Library of Congress. Colleen is the Vice Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and teaches at Georgetown University in the Government Department. She is the previous President of the National Capital Area Political Science Association and served on the American Political Science Association (APSA) Council, the governing body of the organization. Her research focuses on the American presidency, presidential rhetoric, women in politics, and Congress. A native of Pittsburgh, she holds a BA in Political Science from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Politics from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Cross and Crown.

Lydia Tederick

Lydia Tederick is the Curator of the White House. She received her M.A. in museum studies, with an art history concentration, from George Washington University in 1980. She also has a B.A. in art history and political science from Northern Arizona University. She has been part of the White House curatorial staff since 1979. Tederick has lectured and published articles on the White House collection and specializes in historic photographs of the Executive Mansion. Recent articles for White House History include “Photographs of the Lincoln White House” and “Uriah Levy’s Gift to the Nation: A Statue of Thomas Jefferson by Pierre-Jean David d’Angers.” In 2018, Tederick wrote about a White House collection portrait in an article for the Association journal entitled, “Painted at the Paris Peace Conference: A Portrait of President Woodrow Wilson by William Orpen.”

Jennifer Van Horn

Jennifer Van Horn holds a joint appointment as associate professor in Art History and History at the University of Delaware where she teaches courses in American art, material culture, and museum studies. She is the author of The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America (2017) and Portraits of Resistance: Activating Art During Slavery, forthcoming 2022. A piece of this project, published in The Art Bulletin, was awarded the National Portrait Gallery’s inaugural Director’s Essay Prize (2019).