Kate has researched, written and edited books, articles, scholarly essays, online content, brochures, and label copy. She is a reviewer of exhibitions and books and a commentator on the state of the museum field. She has authored, co-authored, and help shape museum installation (furnishing) plans, interpretive plans, museum planning documents, and numerous successful grant applications. Her resume contains a more complete list of publications.
BOOKS
The Hudson-Fulton Celebration: New York’s River Festival of 1909 and the Making of a Metropolis, co-published by Fordham University Press and HHV (2009) Winner of the New York City Book Award for History 2009-10 and a Greater Hudson Heritage Network Award for Excellence
Site guidebooks: Van Cortlandt Manor (1997) and Washington Irving’s Sunnyside (1995)
Catalogs for the following exhibitions, primarily mounted at the Philipsburg Manor Gallery (1996-2002):
- Beauty & the Brick: Illustrated Books and Nineteenth-Century Domestic Design
- Cross Roads & Cross Rivers: Diversity in Colonial New York
- Irving Illustrated (literary painting and graphic design)
- Gallant Gothic (gothic revival architecture, paintings, and objects)
- Beloved Keepsakes (miniature paintings on ivory)
- Art of the Landscape: Sunnyside, Montgomery Place and Romanticism, co-authored with Timothy Steinhoff
- Of Sterling Character (silver and gold objects)
- The Limner’s Trade (colonial- and federal-period paintings)
And with Joseph T. Butler, Field Guide to Identifying American Antique Furniture (hardcover 1985, softcover 1986-current). The softcover has gone through 14 printings.
PUBLICATION CONSULTANT:
Time-Life Series American Country, Advisory Board (1987-90)
For a book series focused on the history and design of country-style antiques and interior decoration, Kate advised on the design, organization, and content.
MEDIA
Her television appearances include PBS's America's Castles and WNBC's The Mighty Hudson. She has also been interviewed on NPR's Here and Now and Marketplace. She has been featured in The New York Times, Early American Life, and Antiques & the Arts Weekly among other publications.
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Its Kinderhook Connections," 2020 Interview with Rob Gelles on WGXC-90.7 FM: https://soundcloud.com/kate-johnson-413940453/legend-of-sleepy-hollow-and-kinderhook.
Links to articles in The New York Times:
Eve M. Kahn, "The Scullery Maid behind the Brocade at Mansion Museums," The New York Times, June 12, 2009.
Joe Queenan, "Good Fences; Got Dirt, Get Curatorial," The New York Times, February 5, 2004.
WRITING & RESEARCH
SELECT ARTICLES AND ESSAYS
"Between Marketplace and Museum Space: Edwin AtLee Barber, Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts, and American Majolica" in Bard Graduate Center traveling exhibition catalog Majolica Mania: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850–1915 (2020) [Exhibition opening in 2021]
Antiques & the Arts Weekly sampling of Exhibition Review Cover Stories (2014-2020):
- "Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists"
- "John Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts in the Punjab and London"
- "Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio
Pottery"
- "Serious Play: Design in Midcentury America"
- "Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode
Island Furniture, 1650-1830"
- "Making It Modern: The Folk Art Collection of Elie and Viola Nadelman"
- "Made in the Americas: The New World
Discovers Asia"
- "From the Village to Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith"
- "George Washington's Garden"
- "Made in Texas: Art, Life & Culture 1845-1900"
- "The Shakers: From Mount Lebanon to the World"
With Ruth Piwonka, wrote essay on the history of Kinderhook (NY) township and compiled historical resources list for Town's website (2019)
"The Origins and First Years of the Columbia County Historical Society," Columbia County History & Heritage Centennial Issue (2016)
"Beauty and the Brick Revisited: Illustrated Books and Nineteenth-Century Domestic Design," Hudson Valley Vernacular Architecture (Jan.-March 2016)
"Greenwich Women Face the Great War" in Connecticut Explored (Winter 2014-15)
"Emblems of State: The Sculpture, Paintings, and Furniture of the United States Senate," The Magazine Antiques (Mar.-Apr. 2014)
“The Price of Chocolate,”The Magazine Antiques (Jan.-Feb. 2012)
“Celebrating Historic Hudson Valley at 60: Rockefeller Patronage in Sleepy Hollow Country,” Winter Antiques Show Catalog (2012)
"Irving Illustrated: The American Writer's Impact on Commercial Art" in Washington Irving y la Alhambra. 150 Aniversario, Alhambra exhibition catalog (2009)
“New Approaches to Historic House Interpretation” in A Passionate Profession: Innovation & Creativity in Museums, Museum Association of New York State Conference Report (2004)
Book review of "Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780-1860" in Winterthur Portfolio (Spring 2003)
With McKelden Smith, introductory essay for Great Estates of the Hudson River (2001)
“From Frans Hals to Windmills: The Arts and Crafts Fascination with the Culture of the Low Countries” in Substance of Style, Perspectives on the American Arts and Crafts Movement, Winterthur Conference Report (1996)