NEW YORK, NY.- Rebecca Robertson, President and CEO of Park Avenue Armory, today announced the appointment of Nina Gray as Curator of Collections, the new institution’s first full-time curatorial position. In this newly created post, Gray will be responsible for the documentation, care, study, cataloguing, and interpretation of the Armory's historic rooms and collections of fine and decorative arts, and military artifacts and documents. She will also conceptualize and organize exhibitions, installations, and educational programs and tours of the Armory.
Constructed from 1877 to 1881, Park Avenue Armory contains what the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission calls “the single most important collection of 19th century interiors to survive intact in one building.” Designers, including Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, Candace Wheeler, the Herter Brothers, and Jasper Cropsey, were commissioned by the Armory’s members to create its interiors, which houses one of the greatest in situ collections of works from the American Aesthetic Movement. The majority of the works were acquired and commissioned during the Gilded Age as gifts from prominent Seventh Regiment Armory members, which included the Schermerhorn, Leffert, Belmont, and Harriman families.
The collections, for which the Armory is serving as a steward toward, are owned by the State of New York and include oil paintings, watercolors, prints, and drawings by artists such as Thomas Nast, William Merritt Chase, Carroll Beckwith, Thomas Hicks, Edouard Detaille, Thure de Thulstrap, and Howard Chandler Christy. The Armory also holds extensive collections of 19th century furniture, silver, sculpture, military objects, and carpets.
The Seventh Regiment Armory Conservancy has recently entered into an agreement with the State of New York to catalogue the art, decorative arts, and manuscripts which tell the history of the Armory. As Curator of Collections, Gray will assess the condition and make conservation recommendations for each piece and interpret its significance to the Armory, which is in the midst of an ongoing restoration and preservation effort.
“Nina’s experience as both a curator and historian are what make her such a perfect fit for the Armory. Her extensive studies of Tiffany and the American aesthetic make her particularly well-suited to oversee our unique collections, and we couldn’t be more delighted to welcome her to the team,” said Rebecca Robertson, President and CEO of Park Avenue Armory. “With the ongoing preservation of our landmark building, which is such an integral party of the city’s history, Nina will play a critical role in helping us manage and display our tremendous and widely diverse collections, which are not only representational of the city’s past and future, but also take on new meaning during these challenging economic times.”
“Since its collection has been kept private in recent decades, this opportunity not only lets me care for and study the rare objects, but also reveals to the public exquisite and unknown treasures that were specifically acquired and commissioned for Park Avenue Armory. I am thrilled to join the Armory team,” said Nina Gray.
Gray has served as an independent curator and architectural historian since 1991, working with the Frick Collection as the author of their nomination as a National Historic Landmark; the Brooklyn Museum, where she assessed its collection of architectural sculpture; The Landmark Preservation Fund, where she served as an historical researcher and writer for the Cultural Medallion Project; and The New-York Historical Society, where she curated A New Light on Tiffany, Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls. In 2007, Gray curated The Park Avenue Armory: A Century of Culture, Competition, and Ceremony, which through photographs, etchings, drawings, and posters, provided insight into the range of cultural events, spectacles, and ceremonies that have drawn crowds to the Armory.
Prior to her independent consulting, she held positions at organizations including The New-York Historical Society, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and Sotheby’s. Gray holds master of arts from The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University and a bachelor of arts from Connecticut College in New London.
