Barry R. Harwood: Colleagues and Friends Share Insights into the Collector Behind the Collection
Barry Harwood’s impact on the world of Decorative Arts has been felt for decades by students at the Cooper Hewitt, colleagues at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and guests at the meticulously restored home in the Hudson Valley that he renovated with his partner Joseph V. Garry. Following are three tributes to Harwood that share the story of Harwood’s life, his curatorial and academic endeavors, and the vision that helped create the interiors at Thornside.
LAUREN ANDERSON
“I first met Barry Hardwood as a graduate student at the Cooper Hewitt in New York. He was a stylish and impeccably dressed professor whose ability with a red pen could send shivers down a student’s spine. His vast knowledge of the history of decorative art was formidable but he was very generous in sharing it with his pupils. I became a better student and writer for having taken his classes and I feel fortunate to have known him academically if only for a few semesters. I never imagined years later I would be working with his collection at STAIR.
Upon entering his upstate home which he shared with his husband Joseph, I felt like I had been transported to the 19th century. The rich colors and textures of the rooms, accented perfectly by luxurious wallpaper created a time capsule which was simultaneously impressive and cozy. Each detail of the home was thoughtfully executed down to the last detail. Although not a large abode, each room had a distinct personality. Joseph was a warm and charming host and I was delighted to hear where each piece had been acquired and the stories that accompanied them. It was a home only a curator and a dedicated partner could craft.
My favorite room was the Japonisme-inspired guest bedroom with its faux bamboo furniture and decorative wall border comprised of Japanese woodblock prints Barry personally designed. It was amazing to be introduced to his collection in situ and an honor to help find new homes for these treasured objects.”
Lauren Anderson is a Decorative Arts specialist at STAIR. Lauren received a master’s degree in the History of Decorative Arts from Parsons and The Cooper Hewitt, and then went on to work as a Specialist and as Associate Director of Museum Services at Christie’s.
KEVIN STAYTON
Barry Harwood was born in New York and grew up familiar with the treasures and pleasures it offered in the 1950s and 60s. After graduating from Brandeis, he was, for a while, transplanted to Rome, researching and writing his PhD dissertation for Princeton but, like most PhD students in Rome, spending a lot of his time immersed in Italian food, art, and the life on offer. When he returned to New York, he opened an antiques gallery on Madison Avenue, specializing in Thonet bentwood furniture and Moorcroft pottery before realizing that his real love was museum work. In 1988 he joined The Brooklyn Museum as Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts, and there he stayed for the rest of his career, ultimately, for many years, as head of that department. Notable among the many exhibitions he produced were The Furniture of George Hunzinger: Invention and Innovation in Nineteenth-Century America (1979); and Modern Gothic: The Inventive Furniture of Kimbel and Cabus, which was completed posthumously. During these years he also taught at the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons’ Graduate Program in the Decorative Arts. In the meantime, Barry met Joseph Garry in the 1970s and they eventually married and spent over forty years together. Their house in Columbia County, Thornside, was a focus of their life.
Anyone who knew Thornside in the 1980s would have discovered with amazement and disbelief its full-blown splendor, as published in The Magazine Antiques in 2018. When Barry and Joseph bought the house, faded, long-dated wallpapers, layers of end-of-roll linoleum, and bright orange cupboards disfigured rooms of lovely proportions and robust original detail. It was not a short road between the two incarnations. In the partnership that spanned the time and distance, they worked together and shared the burden; but Joseph would be the first to say that it was Barry’s vision that lighted the way. His experience as a curator and his devotion to the idea of historic period rooms fostered a period room concept all his own–just as accurate in detail but more flexible and personal in its accommodation of the fictitious family he invented to build and decorate his house, a family whose travels and accidents of life could be altered to suit his needs and desires. He could work some English arts-and-crafts into an American country farmhouse because of the family’s unexpected, once-in-a-lifetime trip to England, for example, or incorporate some things rather grander than the house because of an inheritance out of the blue. In this way, the rooms at Thornside became period rooms of possibility, not limited by those things that hedged him in professionally as a scholar.
Barry didn’t believe in wasted effort, materials or money in the process. While many of us might have stripped the wallpaper and linoleum immediately and painted all the interiors white in order to proceed from that blank and restful canvas, Barry kept the future in his head and the house as found. He only wanted to do it over once. With patience and a stern perfectionism, he shopped. Over decades of antique shows, auctions, antiques mall outings, and trips to England, he would come home with a pair of lace curtains, a length of upholstery fabric, the frame of a chair, a Christopher Dresser decanter, a Worcester vase, and pack it away or give it temporary prominence on the kitchen counter. Indeed, a few cornerstones of furniture began to take their places over the years–the sideboard in the dining room, a bookcase in the parlor for books in period binding, a couple of grand beds, a vitrine for the best porcelain–and, of course, Hunzinger chairs. But for the most part, it was not until near the end of the process that the transformation–sudden, stunning–was made from the homely and worn house we had known for so long to the splendid, glittering, fascinating showplace–the Thornside Barry had seen in his mind’s eye all along.
These things that were part of that vision were gathered with purpose, discretion and the eye of a curator, someone who could read the stories objects have to tell with perception and imagination. They have now left the context for which they were lovingly gathered, ready for a next installment.
Kevin Stayton is Chief Curator Emeritus at the Brooklyn Museum, where he began his career in 1980 as Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts. He was a colleague and friend of Barry Harwood for nearly forty years.
SARAH COFFIN
Barry Harwood was passionate about objects and the stories they told as he was about life. When I first met Barry, in various decorative arts societies, I am not sure. But, by the time I became the Senior Curator in charge of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department at Cooper Hewitt, Barry had already been for a while in a similar position at the Brooklyn Museum of Art as well as teaching in CH’s graduate program, so I knew what an influence he was on so many. We immediately saw in each other this passion for learning and loving objects that we wanted to share with and convey to others. Barry was above all generous with his time, expertise and even objects, as I learned early on. When he learned I was working on a collection audit and wanted to amplify the Museum’s holdings of American glass, Barry promptly offered to give a duplicate of a 19th century piece of glass in the Brooklyn Museum’s collection to Cooper Hewitt, and I accepted it with gratitude.
While we both were curators, we had both also been on the commercial side of the art and antique world- a rarity still in the museum world- and Barry was a collector too. This freed us from the path of only academic research as we both saw in personal collections the ability to compare and contrast that tells so much and helps with attributions.
We saw in each other how important the lure of the chase was to us both. We found that close visual study of objects revealed as much as research. Barry’s collecting focused on the Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth and very early twentieth century for an 1870 house in the Hudson Valley, not far from Frederic Church’s Olana that he and his husband Joseph acquired and spent almost 30 years searching out the pieces that were chronologically but also thematically related to the house. Tracking down special pieces required much more legwork than it does now with pre-internet catalogues. Barry cast his knowing eye in antique shops, auctions and house sales and making historic attributions, and connections.
At the same time he researched objects to add to the house, he did so for the Brooklyn Museum, which benefitted from his finds. He improved the cataloguing of its collection while also being generous to and making sure the Museum always got pieces of the caliber for the museum, first. I appreciated all this having done a thesis in the Anglo-American connections of late 19th century Arts and Crafts and Aesthetic movement furniture, and knew what a paucity of information there had been for the American material when I tackled the topic some time ago.
It was not all research: Barry created tableaux vivants of this era, both in an academic sense at the museum, in its lineup of nineteenth century period rooms, but with both stylistic flare and that of the storyteller. To wit, is this photo of a corner of the house, which he worked to furnish with vignettes of this period literally till his dying day.
Barry knew more about American porcelain than I will ever hope to know, and used pieces to good effect mixed with other arts. He also thought about all media, and was leading a search at the time of his death for the right fabric and embroidery sources for a chair, part of Frederic Church’s original furnishings at Olana, based on old photos, where he preceded me on the National Advisory Committee. In taking up seeing this project through, I have found that Barry led others to search museum holdings for related fabrics, but then wanted to be sure the result would sing out in the context of Olana. When this project at Olana in his honour is complete, I will know that he already knew much of what I have come to learn about this textile but his study has led me further. I hope the results will excite people about what can be learned by close study of an object, and be a testament to Barry’s sense of accuracy mixed with flare in an historic context.
An article from the Magazine Antiques published not long before he died enables us to capture some of what Barry thought and felt about this house and its furnishings. But the objects themselves all had many layers of meaning for him so nothing could say all that Barry could say about them. They are likely to be worth multiple looks to see the essence of what he liked about the design ethos of the latter part of the nineteenth century through the eyes and heart of the best informed person on this period. I can see Barry, full of passion relishing in the details he learned from so many of these pieces, as he and Joseph, the ever- hospitable hosts lived with and among these specially chosen objects.
Sarah D. Coffin is an independent Decorative Arts and Design Consultant, Curator, and Lecturer who was previously the Senior Curator and Head of the Product Design and Decorative Arts Department at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.