Biltmore Reflections (pt. 1)
Making It in the Door
Oh, the things I learned! Oh, the people I met! Oh, the things I did! Oh, the places I went!
Some days I felt like a princess in a castle. Other days I was stressed and overwhelmed. This was my work life for seven years as curator of the largest historic house in America, Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.
Let me start with the numbers so that those of you who haven’t been to Biltmore can imagine the House and the land. Constructed by George Vanderbilt between 1890 and 1895, the House is at the end of a three-mile approach road. It has 250 rooms, 175,000 square feet of floor space, 33 bedrooms, 65 fireplaces, a 70-foot-high ceiling in the Banquet Hall, and 92,000 objects of art, books, and archives. There are 8,000 acres of land including formal gardens, a conservatory, fields, trails, and more. Nowadays, there are about 2,500 staff that work at Biltmore taking care of the House, the grounds, and the 1,000,000 annual visitors.
It was probably pre-determined that I would work in a museum. When I was six years old, my mom put a calendar with Impressionist artists on my pegboard wall. At the end of each month, it was hoped that I would know the name of the artist and the title of the artwork. Not surprisingly, I was an art history major for my undergraduate studies. While I enjoyed all the art I was exposed to, I became especially intrigued with textiles. One of my favorite professors suggested I go on to graduate school to study decorative arts. At that time there were two master’s programs in the country that focused on decorative arts (textiles, furniture, silver, glass, etc.), Winterthur in Delaware that focused on American decorative arts, and the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons School of Design program in New York that emphasized European decorative arts. I chose the Cooper-Hewitt program.