The Metropolitan Museum's great lace collection was started when the Museum became the first among American museums to organize a permanent collection of lace with the acceptance of the McCallum Collection in 1879 and the bequests of Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Robert L. Stuart, Mrs. Augustus Cleveland, and Mrs. A. W. Winters shortly thereafter. In 1893 a loan collection of antique laces shown at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was assembled by a committee of New York women headed by Catharine Augusta Newbold. About 1900 Miss Newbold arranged and labeled an exhibition of laces and linenworks lent to the Metropolitan Museum by Mrs. James Boorman Johnstone and the Misses Johnstone. "Her scholarly knowledge of lace technique enabled the Museum for the first time to offer a comprehensive display of lace illustrating its historical development," wrote Miss Frances Morris, then curator of the textile department.
Miss Newbold's name occurs again in connection with a group of
Credit: Gift of The Lady Reigate in memory of her mother, Mrs. William Redmond Cross, 1979