Lawrence Perkins

Lawrence Perkins
Name	Lawrence Perkins
Birth date	1971
Birth place	New Haven, Connecticut
Occupation	Author; Historian; Curator
Nationality	American

Lawrence Perkins

Lawrence Perkins is an American historian, author, and museum curator noted for scholarship on nineteenth- and twentieth-century transatlantic cultural exchange, material culture, and print history. His work bridges archival research, curatorial practice, and public scholarship, producing monographs, exhibition catalogues, and articles that have informed institutions, universities, and heritage organizations. Perkins has collaborated with major libraries, museums, and academic presses, and his research often intersects with studies of industrialization, migration, and visual culture.

Early life and education

Perkins was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised near Yale University and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, environments that influenced his early interest in archives and collections. He attended Hopkins School before matriculating at Brown University, where he studied history and American studies and engaged with the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and the John Carter Brown Library. Perkins completed graduate work at Columbia University, earning an M.A. in history and an M.Phil. with a focus on nineteenth-century print culture; his doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania examined transatlantic networks involving publishers, collectors, and circulating libraries. His mentors and interlocutors included faculty and curators associated with the Grolier Club, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Smithsonian Institution.

Career

Perkins began his career as a research assistant at the New-York Historical Society, contributing to cataloguing projects and exhibitions that engaged with nineteenth-century American prints and illustrated books. He served as curator of prints and drawings at a regional museum before joining a university press editorial board, where he oversaw series on material culture, urban history, and Atlantic studies. Perkins has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Morgan Library & Museum, and he taught seminars and graduate courses at Rutgers University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania on topics including print culture, book history, and museum practice. He has consulted for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Library on provenance research, exhibition loans, and cataloguing nineteenth- and twentieth-century collections.

Perkins’s museum projects combine conservation, provenance, and exhibition design; notable collaborations involved the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Cooper Hewitt, and the New-York Historical Society. He has served on advisory boards for the Bibliographical Society of America, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, and the American Historical Association’s Committee on Public History. Perkins’s editorial work includes contributions to series edited by the University of California Press, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press.

Major works and contributions

Perkins is author or editor of several monographs and catalogues that have become reference points for scholars of print culture and material history. His monograph on illustrated serials and transatlantic book networks draws on archival holdings at the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. He produced a widely cited catalogue raisonné of a prominent nineteenth-century lithographer, based on collections at the Boston Athenaeum, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Huntington Library. Perkins edited a volume on industrial design and consumer culture that included essays referencing the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Cooper Hewitt, and the Smithsonian Institution.

His exhibition catalogues have accompanied major shows at the Morgan Library & Museum and the New-York Historical Society, and his work on provenance has informed restitution and acquisition cases involving the British Museum, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, and national archives in Canada and Australia. Perkins’s essays appear in journals and edited collections published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, and the University of Chicago Press; topics have included the role of circulating libraries in London and Boston, the illustrated press in Paris and New York, and the movement of printed ephemera through port cities such as Liverpool and New Orleans.

Perkins has advanced methodologies in digital humanities collaborations with the Digital Public Library of America and the Early English Books Online project, developing metadata schemas and digitization workflows adopted by municipal archives and university special collections. He has contributed to cataloguing standards used by the Council on Library and Information Resources and helped design curricular modules for museum studies programs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Delaware.

Personal life

Perkins lives in Philadelphia and is active in local heritage networks, collaborating with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He is married to a conservator who has worked at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and they have two children. Outside of his professional work, Perkins volunteers with literacy initiatives connected to the New York Public Library and serves on the board of a community arts nonprofit affiliated with the Barnes Foundation. His recreational interests include collecting nineteenth-century prints, cycling along the Schuylkill River Trail, and participating in public lectures at the Library of Congress and local historical societies.

Awards and recognition

Perkins’s scholarship has been recognized with fellowships and awards from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He received a publication grant from the Getty Foundation for a catalogue project and a curatorial fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre. Perkins has been honored with prizes from the Bibliographical Society of America and the Museum Association for exhibition design and interpretive outreach. He frequently appears as a consultant and expert commentator for documentary productions associated with the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel, and he has been invited to keynote symposia at the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the Royal Historical Society.

Category:American historians Category:Museum curators