For November’s Artscape, we visited New Haven, Connecticut, where an exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery showcases the dramatic artistry of furniture making in colonial-era Rhode Island. Rhode Island Public Radio’s Chuck Hinman talked with the gallery’s Curator of American Decorative Arts, Patricia Kane, about Art & Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830.RIPR’s Chuck Hinman talks with Yale art curator Patricia Kane about the exhibit, Art & Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830.
The Art & Industry show exalts Rhode Island for, at one time, producing furniture of unmatched artistry and craftsmanship. It’s an inspiration for anyone concerned that Rhode Island sometimes does not measure up to its neighbors, particularly Massachusetts and Connecticut. Although, it seems a somehow fitting irony that you have to go out of state to see it.
Kane and her colleagues, among them Dennis Carr at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, spent the last 16 years on this project, researching and identifying Rhode Island furniture makers. They’ve created an extensive database of Rhode Island furniture, the Rhode Island Furniture Archive, and produced a stunning 500-page book, the catalog for the show. Art & Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650-1830 is at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, now through January 8th, 2017.
