Curating Identities: Women and the Creation of an American Culture in Colonial New York

Women living in colonial New York were poised at the crossroads of two global trade routes, the British and the Dutch, and so had access to a collection of goods and ideas unparalleled in either their fellow North American colonies or their European mother countries. As is evidenced in surviving estate inventories and portraiture, among other sources, women who had the freedom and the economic means to purchase import goods took advantage of their unique position within the global world of trade to curate collections of trade goods that allowed them to express a sense of taste developed alongside exposure to this global material culture. Their collections of import items show a developing aesthetic culture distinctive to New York, and in the case of some goods, such as calico, they created demand for specific object types that reflected their location at a unique intersection of trade and culture.