A native of Mobile, Alabama, Katie Hall Burlison (MA 2006) is curator of decorative arts at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans and oversees a collection housed in multiple museums throughout the state. At the BGC, Katie focused on the history of French decorative arts and interiors, but since returning to the South, she has expanded her areas of research to include Newcomb Pottery, Louisiana silver and furniture, and collections management practices. Katie enjoys spending much of her spare time volunteering to improve communities across her unique city.

What attracted you to the BGC’s program?

In 2002, I was working as an assistant editor at Art & Antiques magazine in Atlanta. We were doing a profile of Susan Weber, founder and director of the BGC. While proofreading the story, I thought it sounded like such a unique program. After having completed a little more than a year of architecture school at the University of Virginia, I had switched my major to French with sociology and art history minors. I hadn’t really considered decorative arts/material culture as a distinct field. At the magazine, because I was charged with compiling the museum and gallery exhibit listings, I was constantly reading and writing about all kinds of exciting happenings in New York without seeing them in person. The BGC program’s mix of design history with social history and the possibility of using my French again were the major selling points. It all just came together at the right time.

What were the focus and highlights of your study here?

My focus was “the long 18th century”—from around 1660 to 1830—in western Europe, particularly France, England, and Italy. I also studied American material culture in Jeffrey Collins’ Neoclassicism in Europe and America, and 19th-Century American Furniture with Ken Ames. My favorite period was the 1760s-1780s just before the French Revolution, when the decorative arts in France were transitioning between the Rococo and neoclassicism. While some of my fellow students thought it was “too pretty”, I was enamored with the 1787 suite of carved, painted and upholstered furniture made by Georges Jacob for Marie Antoinette’s bedroom in the Petit Trianon. I had seen it in person during our Bard Term Abroad, and again when I traveled back to France while researching my thesis. Besides just the aesthetics, there were so many social and political aspects to the material culture of France at that time. Another artist whose designs fascinated me was Jean Bérain, a designer to the court of Louis XIV. BTA was one of the best experiences – we spent a month in France and the Netherlands, traveling between city and country. Taking tea on the rooftop of Het Loo was so special! I liked that we not only visited the 17th and 18th century locations that I was familiar with, but also Le Corbusier houses and other important 20th-century places; seeing how a country’s designers borrowed from the past and interpreted modernity in different ways gave a real continuity to the course.

You are currently at the Louisiana State Museum. Can you describe your position there and your projects?

The collection for which I am responsible includes furniture, silver, ceramics, folk art objects, and many souvenirs from important people and events in Louisiana’s history. My background in French and European studies has been useful here because many of our objects were made in Europe and either sold in Louisiana or brought here by locals after making trips abroad. And of course the vibrant mix of cultures that makes up New Orleans gives it an international feel that is hard to find anywhere else in the country. Originally when I came to the museum in 2008 I was part of a four-person team tasked with resolving old loans made to the museum stretching back to the founding in 1906. Museum standards and practices have evolved tremendously over the past 100 years, so we dealt with a variety of numbering systems and acquisition methods. We used Louisiana’s statutes related to abandoned property to guide us, and through the process were able to resolve thousands of loans, which was very satisfying. Because of our detailed documentation of the project, we were able to share our methodology and results with other museums and archives through conference presentations and a journal article. That project taught me a great deal about the history of the Louisiana State Museum collection, classifications of objects, and storage methods. Combining that knowledge with my studies of decorative arts and design history gave me a well-rounded start to my museum career. It also helped me move fairly seamlessly into the decorative arts position in 2009.

In addition to working with other curators on several cross-collection exhibits, last year I curated an exhibit of Newcomb Pottery—“The Palm, the Pine, and the Cypress: Newcomb Pottery of New Orleans”—at one of the museum’s French Quarter properties, the 18th-century house known as Madame John’s Legacy. Learning and writing about Newcomb and the women who were part of the crafts program there from the 1890s to the 1940s has been some of my most rewarding work. It’s fun having people call me with stories of how they acquired a piece or share insights into their family history. Currently I’m working on an exhibit commemorating the Battle of New Orleans, a book of collections highlights, and making environmental improvements to collections storage. We are also in the process of refreshing the interpretation and presentation of the 1850 House museum, a townhouse on Jackson Square.