The library staff mourns the loss of its Chief Curator, Lynn Catanese, who departed this life Sunday morning, July 1, 2018. Lynn had worked at Hagley for over 28 years. She was hired as an archival specialist in 1990 and gradually rose through the ranks to become supervisor of the Manuscripts and Archives in 2002, then Chief Curator of Library Collections in 2011.
Lynn always counted herself fortunate to work with the staff at Manuscripts and Archives. She especially valued her relationship with her mentor and predecessor, Dr. Michael Nash (Chief Curator until his departure in 2002). Lynn frequently referred to Nash as “the king of collections development” and greatly admired his ability to target important collections with outstanding research value.
Lynn built upon Nash’s successes and expanded them in significant ways. She felt a particularly strong sense of mission about expanding Hagley’s collecting to include women’s roles in American commerce and enterprise. Her work was instrumental in the recent deposit by Catalyst, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to making workplaces more inclusive for women. The Avon Products collection arrived during her early years at Hagley. More recently, Lynn attracted the papers of Lois K. Herr, whose landmark case against the AT&T Bell System in the 1970s shaped corporate law and policies regarding gender equality.
Lynn’s collecting interests also focused on industrial design. In particular, she was an aficionado of mid-twentieth-century design. During her years, Hagley saw a great influx of mid-century design history collections, many of which owed their presence at Hagley to her. The Irv Koons papers, Thomas Lamb papers, Marc Harrison collection, and Marshall Johnson papers were all brought in by Mike Nash, but Lynn took special care of them and continued to develop them. The same can be said of the seminal Raymond Loewy collection. Lynn brought in the Richard Hollerith papers, the John Gordon Rideout papers and the Everett Worthington papers. She also oversaw the transfer from Winterthur of the papers of William Pahlmann, an important interior designer whose work graced restaurants and hotels the world over in the 1950s and 1960s and informed the famous sets and style of AMC’s Mad Men cable television series about the 1960s American advertising industry.
Besides offering reference to researchers of these collections, Lynn conducted her own scholarship, writing articles about Thomas Lamb and the development of universal design. As preparation for Hagley’s 2016 Fall Conference, “Making Modern Disabilities: Histories of Disability, Design, and Technology,” she led discussions with students from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in History Museum Studies, introducing them to relevant Hagley design history collections.
Other collections she was especially proud of bringing in, developing, or processing include the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) records, the records of the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Wawa collection, and the records of pioneer consumer researcher Ernest Dichter and his Institute for Motivational Research, Inc.
She curated more than a dozen exhibitions on subjects ranging from women and work, Avon and beauty culture, Raymond Loewy and consumer culture, and the resistance to Prohibition in Delaware.
Lynn was a tireless advocate for high-quality reference work. Her vision for Hagley included developing and maintaining some of the most rigorous standards for archival description available. In its finding aids, Hagley typically describes its archival collections in much greater detail than its peer institutions in order to aid reference staff in their work with researchers and also to assist the researchers themselves. The resulting utility of its finding aids and reference services often elicited comment from researchers, who frequently noted that they knew of few institutions so dedicated to archival description and reference work. She also believed such deep description was the key for the library’s departments to develop and maintain strong connections with the content of their collections. When the library developed its first Guide to Collections pamphlets, Lynn drafted content for the women’s history, consumer culture, and industrial design guides. She also published guides to women’s history in the sources at Hagley. Her commitment to reference work will count among her important legacies at Hagley.
The women’s history reference guide is, in fact, a distillation of her book, Women’s History: A Guide to Sources at Hagley Museum and Library (Greenwood Press, 1997), which shed light on materials that had been less well described at Hagley. The increased use of related collections, particularly the correspondence among the women in the du Pont family, by historians of women can be attributed at least in part to the publication of Lynn’s guide. Lynn’s thoughtful revelations about the library’s holdings in the light of women and gender history also led to a surge in use by historians of the nineteenth-century.
Lynn also maintained connections to many donors and depositors of collections. One example of this was her care in maintaining connections to the National Association of Manufacturers, demonstrating through her communications Hagley’s responsible stewardship of the collection. Her work encouraged the NAM’s staff to continue contributing to the collection over the years, growing its over-all volume, but especially expanding the number of themes that the collection spanned. Her work ensured that it grew into a superb historical resource, particularly for recent American history.
After the news of her passing became public, the library received a flood of dismay and sorrow from individuals and organizations alike. It is a testament to her attention to detail and her dedication to Hagley that she paid personal attention to all transactions involving such donors and depositors.
To recognize Lynn’s many contributions, Hagley is developing a Lynn Catanese Fund in her honor. It will support collections development and preservation in her areas of interest, women’s history and design history. More information will become available in coming days.
Erik Rau is the Director of Library Services at Hagley Museum and Library.