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DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY’S SMITH AWARD to GO TO ALICE COONEY FRELINGHUYSEN

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NEW YORK CITY — The Robert C. Smith Committee of the Decorative Arts Society has voted the 2006 Smith Award to Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen. She is honored for the most distinguished decorative arts article of 2006, entitled “The Most Artistic House in New York City: The Tiffany House at Seventy-Second Street and Madison Avenue.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art published it in Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall (pp 22–47). It is a catalog for the exhibition, “Louis Comfort Tiffany and Laurelton Hall — An Artists’ Country Estate,” on view at the museum through May 20. Frelinghuysen directed the exhibition. Among seven authors, she wrote eight essays for the catalog.

Frelinghuysen is the Anthony W. and Lulu C. Wang Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has been a staff member since earning in 1980 an MA in the Winterthur Program of Early American Culture (BA Princeton). Her publications, lectures and exhibitions in the United States and abroad emphasize ceramics, glass or furniture, particularly of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.

A committee of three judged entries published in the United States before December 31. The chair is Milo M. Naeve, Field-McCormick Curator Emeritus of American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago. Members are Dr Jessie J. Poesch, professor emeritus of art history at Newcomb College of Tulane University, and Peter M. Kenny, Ruth Bigelow Wriston Curator of American Decorative Arts and administrator of The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum. He abstained from participation with a colleague’s nomination.

Committee members are former recipients of the Smith Award. They are not eligible for the award while serving on the committee. Others are eligible regardless of a previous award.

The career of noted art historian Robert C. Smith inspired the award. His interests were painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts of Spain, Portugal and the United States during a career at the University of Pennsylvania.

The award will be presented formally at a meeting of the Decorative Arts Society. The purpose of the event is encouraging scholarly achievements in the decorative arts that meet the high standard of Dr Robert C. Smith.

For information, call Milo Naeve at 610-388-7374.