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Henry Watson Kent

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Henry Watson Kent (1866-1948) was an American librarian and museum administrator, "a great pioneer in American museum education and administration".[1]

Life

Kent was educated at Columbia College, where he was taught by Melvil Dewey. He was librarian at the Norwich Free Academy and then curator for 12 years at the adjacent Slater Memorial Museum. In 1900 Kent started working at the New York Grolier Club, rising from assistant librarian to become President.

In 1905 Robert W. De Forest recruited Kent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1907 Kent became Supervisor of Museum Instruction. Appointed to the position of Secretary in 1913, Kent stayed at the Metropolitan until 1940.

Kent was a founding member of the American Association of Museums and the American Federation of Arts. In 1924 he was invited to join the Arts Advisory Committee for the Carnegie Foundation.

Henry Watson Kent served as president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts from 1936–1938. In 1930 he received the AIGA Medal, the most distinguished in the field of design and visual communication.

Works

  • (ed. with John Cotton Dana) Literature of libraries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 6 vols., Chicago: A. C. McClure, 1906-7.
  • No. 1: The duties & qualifications of a librarian: a discourse ... in the Sorbonne, 1780; by Jean-Baptiste Cotton des Houssayes.
  • No. 2: The reformed librarie-keeper ... concerning the place and office of a librarie-keeper; by John Dury (1596-1680).
  • No. 3: The life of Sir Thomas Bodley written by himself together with the first draft of the statutes of the public library at Oxon.
  • No. 4: Two tracts on the founding and maintaining of parochial libraries in Scotland; by James Kirkwood (d. 1708).
  • No. 5: A brief outline of the history of libraries; by Justus Lipsius; transl. from 2nd ed, 1607
  • No. 6: News from France or a description of the library of Cardinal Mazarin preceded by The surrender of the library ... two tracts written by Gabriel Naude (1600-1653).
  • What I am Pleased To Call My Education, New York: The Grolier Club, 1949.

References

  1. ^ Antoniette M. Guglielmo (2008). Workbench of American Taste: Richard F. Bach, Industrial Art, and Consumerism at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1917--1940. ProQuest. pp. 70–75. ISBN 978-0-549-98777-2. Retrieved 9 February 2013.

Further reading

  • Edward P. Alexander, 'Henry Watson Kent standardizes functions of the art museum', in The Museum in America, pp. 51-66
  • The Bruce Rogers Collection at the Library of Congress contains include transcripts of Rogers' letters to his friend Harry Watson Kent, secretary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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