Delight & Distraction

Lydia Blackmore is the decorative arts curator at the Historic New Orleans Collection. She earned an MA and certificate in museum studies from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware; she also holds a degree in history from the College of William and Mary. As curator, Blackmore oversees research, acquisition, and preservation of decorative and fine art collections. She manages the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South project and is coordinating preservation projects at the historic 533 Royal Street campus. In eleven years at HNOC, Blackmore has curated or cocurated several exhibitions, including Making Mardi Gras (2022), A Vanishing Bounty (2024), and Unknown Sitters (2024). Outside of HNOC, she is a member of the board of trustees of the Historic BK House & Gardens. 

Nina Bozak, curator of rare books at the Historic New Orleans Collection, previously worked in the special collections of both Tulane and Dillard Universities. She received her MLIS from the Palmer School of Library and Information Science at Long Island University with a concentration in rare books and special collections, after which she worked at Swann Auction Galleries and Bauman Rare Books in New York before joining the staff of HNOC in 2010. In addition to her work with HNOC’s rare books, Bozak is also a curator for its performing and literary arts collections.

Since 2002, Tara Chicirda has curated a number of exhibitions at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg including A Gift to the Nation: The Joseph and June Hennage Collection and Keeping Time: Tall Case Clocks. Prior to coming to Williamsburg, Chicirda held curatorial positions at the New Jersey Historical Society and the Winterthur Museum, where she also assisted with an exhibition mounted at the National Gallery of Art. Her research projects have taken her from Rhode Island to Georgia, and she has published widely on American furniture in The Magazine Antiques, Antiques and Fine Art, the Chipstone Foundation journal American Furniture, and the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts. Her most recent article “Keeping Time: Tall Case Clocks” was published in Antiques and Fine Arts (Summer 2021) and “A Rhode Island Cabinetmaker in Kentucky: Revelations of a Clock Reexamined,” co-authored with Mack Cox, was published in American Furniture (2018). Chicirda graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College and holds a master of arts degree from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in Early American Culture.    

Lake Douglas holds degrees in landscape architecture from LSU and Harvard and in urban history from UNO. His research draws on nineteenth-century agricultural, horticultural, and gardening literature; census data; newspapers; commercial records; maps; and other sources to gain new insights into the evolution of local cultural landscapes. He has published nationally and internationally in books, articles, and critical reviews and presented his research at American and European professional conferences. He was guest curator for HNOC’s 2001 exhibition In Search of Yesterday’s Gardens: Landscapes of Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, recognized with an Honor Award from the Louisiana chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Sarah Duggan is the project manager of the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South (DAGS) project at the Historic New Orleans Collection, an initiative that documents and shares information about pre-1865 material life in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. She leads DAGS’s work through data management, cataloging fieldwork, archival research, and two internship programs. In 2021 she co-curated the exhibition Pieces of History: Ten Years of Decorative Arts Field Work. Duggan holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of a Delaware, and a bachelor’s in history and religious studies from the College of William and Mary.

Dr. Emelie Gevalt is deputy director and chief curatorial and program officer at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) in New York City. Her exhibitions at AFAM include the critically acclaimed What That Quilt Knows About Me (2023) and Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North (2023). Gevalt received her BA in art history and theater studies from Yale University, her MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware, and her PhD in art history from the University of Delaware. Her two decades of art-world experience include positions at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Christie’s, New York, where she was a vice president in the estates, appraisals, and valuations department. 

Leslie B. Grigsby, senior curator of ceramics and glass at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library, is responsible for more than 20,000 ceramic and glass objects. She received her BA in art history from the University of Illinois and her postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies from the University of Manchester in England. Grigsby has published extensively on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ceramics, design sources, and the histories of dining and drinking. She was instrumental in sending online Winterthur’s catalogue of more than 90,000 objects and has curated numerous major exhibitions. Grigsby has lectured across the US, Canada, and the UK, as well as in China and Australia. 

Daniel Hammer is dedicated to preserving the history and culture of New Orleans through his work as president and CEO of the Historic New Orleans Collection, where he has worked for nineteen years, serving in various capacities including head of reader services and deputy director. Daniel earned a bachelor’s degree in German literature from Reed College and a master’s degree in historic preservation from Tulane University School of Architecture. He currently serves as chair of the French Quarter Museum Association and as a member of the board of the Vieux Carré Commission Foundation and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation Advisory Council.

Kenneth Hoffman is the executive director of the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans. A historian with degrees from Tulane University and the University of Bristol, he has held key roles at the Louisiana State Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the National WWII Museum, where he served as director of education for eighteen years. A past president of the Louisiana Association of Museums, Hoffman brings decades of experience in museum leadership, education, and cultural preservation.

Betsy Golden Kellem is a scholar of the unusual. Her writing on circus and entertainment history has appeared in venues including The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, The Public Domain Review, Smithsonian, Atlas Obscura, and Slate. Kellem has served on the boards of the Barnum Museum and the Circus Historical Society and is an Emmy winner for her Showman’s Shorts video series on P. T. Barnum. She is a columnist for JSTOR Daily and regularly teaches and speaks for academia and industry. If you ask nicely, she will juggle knives for you.

Peggy Scott Laborde is an Emmy Award-winning producer and the host/producer of Steppin’ Out, New Orleans’s only weekly arts and entertainment discussion program, now in its 38th season on WYES-TV. 

Laborde is a board member of the City Park Improvement Association and the New Orleans Museum of Art. She served as the president of the Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival for a total of 14 years and continues to serve on the Festival's board. She is also the co-author of four books and has produced over 30 documentaries for WYES focusing on the food, culture and history of New Orleans. Laborde is the producer of documentaries on the history of the French Quarter, St. Charles Avenue, Canal Street and Bourbon Street. 

As part of HNOC’s education department, Kendric J. Perkins develops curricula, tours, and programs that highlight the rich and complex stories of New Orleans. A fourth-generation New Orleanian, Perkins descends from both enslaved and free people of African descent in Louisiana, with family roots tracing back to the colonial era. This deep personal connection to the region’s history informs his work, which is grounded in a decolonized framework. His research interests include the history of chess in New Orleans, the legacy of Black chess players across the Americas, and chess’s ties to coffeehouses and revolutionary movements.

Claudia Pfeiffer has a thirty-year background in fine art and exhibitions and has been with the National Sporting Library and Museum since her position was underwritten by the George L. Ohrstrom Foundation in 2012. During her tenure, Pfeiffer has overseen more than sixty fine art exhibitions and written extensively on sporting art and history. Her projects include Munnings Out in the Open: The Open-Air Works of Alfred Munnings; Clarice Smith: Power and Grace; Sidesaddle, 1690–1935; Identity and Restraint: Art of the Dog Collar; Honoring the Point: The Gwynne McDevitt Sporting Dog Collection; and Intrepid Audubon: The Birds of America. Her essay “Ellen Emmet Rand: Artist and Equestrian” was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2020.

Miki Pfeffer edited A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain’s Court: Letters from Grace King’s New England Sojourns. She also authored Southern Ladies and Suffragists: Julia Ward Howe and Women’s Rights at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair, which won the Welty Prize. She speaks often on aspects of culture during the long nineteenth century and especially on Grace King , the subject of her continuous study. Affirming the adage that historians are people who like to read others’ mail, Dr. Pfeffer’s mission is to transcribe all the correspondence in King’s archived papers.

Allison Robinson, PhD, is the associate curator of history exhibitions at The New York Historical. Robinson received her MA and PhD in history from the University of Chicago and an MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. Since joining The Historical, she has curated multiple exhibitions and installations, including Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field; Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw; Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated); Women’s Work; and Running for Civil Rights: The New York Pioneer Club, 1936–1976. Robinson also contributed research and text to the exhibition Black Dolls. 

In 2021, Tom Savage was appointed director of educational travel and conferences for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, following a sixteen-year career at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library as director of museum affairs and director of external affairs. From 1998 to 2005, he was senior vice president and director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art, where he directed Sotheby’s American Arts Course, and from 1981 to 1998 he served as curator and director of museums of the Historic Charleston Foundation. A native of Virginia, Savage received a BA in art history from the College of William and Mary and a master’s degree in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program of the State University of New York. Savage currently serves on the board of governors of the Decorative Arts Trust. He is a former trustee of the Royal Oak Foundation, the Attingham Summer School, and the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation. In addition, he served as a presidential appointee to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House from 1993 to 2002.