Florence M. Montgomery

Florence Mellowes Montgomery (1914–1998) was an American museologist and art historian, specializing in textiles.

Born Florence Elizabeth Mellowes in Fort Wayne, Indiana, she earned her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed by a Radcliffe College M.F.A. Montgomery worked in the library of the Art Institute of Chicago prior to her graduate study. She later was an assistant to the director of the Rhode Island School of Design's Museum of Art. She then moved to New York to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Joseph Downs, curator of the American Wing.[1]

In 1946, she married Charles F. Montgomery, with whom she had two children: William Phelps, who went on to become a digital fine artist, and Agnes Nisbet, who died at the age of five.[2] Charles's career spurred two moves, one in 1949 to Delaware and one in 1970 to Connecticut, but did not cut short Montgomery's. When Yale published a posthumous tribute to Charles's career (originally intended to celebrate his retirement), the volume's bibliography and very title acknowledged the professional contributions of his wife and collaborator.[3]

At the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, Montgomery pioneered the training of museum guides. She also taught art history in the influential Program in Early American Culture. For ten years, she served as the assistant curator of textiles.[4]

Montgomery continued to write, teach, volunteer, and work as a museum consultant until her death.[5] The publication of her historical dictionary of fabrics, Textiles in America, 1650-1870 (1984), was an "event much anticipated" by scholars[6] That volume and her earlier book, Printed Textiles: English and American Cottons and Linens, 1700-1850 (1970), continue to appear on syllabi for courses in material culture and the decorative arts.[7]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Linda Eaton, Foreword to Textiles in America, 1650-1870 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007), Google Books (accessed 19 February 2015), ix.
  2. ↑ Wendell D. Garrett, "Charles Franklin Montgomery," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society Vol. 8, Pt. 1, April 1978, http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44517602.pdf (accessed 15 January 2015), 27; Maureen Milford, "Delaware Spaces: Built-ins appealing in mid-century home," Delaware Online, August 26, 2014, http://www.delawareonline.com/story/life/home-garden/2014/07/02/shipley-road-house-hones-mid-century-modern-feel/12086187/ (accessed 19 February 2015).
  3. ↑ Charles F. Montgomery and Florence M. Montgomery: A Tribute (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1978); see Yale Museum Store (accessed 19 February 2015).
  4. ↑ Eaton, ix-x.
  5. ↑ Eaton, x.
  6. ↑ Philip B. Scranton, Review of Textiles in America, 1650-1870, Technology and Culture Vol. 28, No. 2 (April 1987), 363, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3105588 (accessed 19 February 2015).
  7. ↑ See for example Laura Auricchio, "Visualizing Revolution," Fall 2007, https://enfilade18thc.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/visualizing-revolution-syllabus.pdf (accessed 19 February 2015); Debra A. Reid, "Historic Domestic Interiors," Spring 2002, http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~dareid/his_5360_2002_syllabus.pdf (accessed 19 February 2015); Dell Upton, "Introduction to Material Culture Studies," Spring 2003, http://www.vernaculararchitectureforum.org/Resources/Documents/Syllabi/upton4.pdf (accessed 19 February 2015); Philip Zimmerman and Eliza Reilly, "Museum Mysteries," Fall 2012, http://museum-mysteries.weebly.com/class-schedule.html (accessed 19 February 2015).
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