PHILADELPHIA – The Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) has named Peter M. Kenny the winner of its annual Award of Merit for 2018. Kenny is co-president of Classical American Homes Preservation Trust, a position he shares with Margize Howell. The scholar will be honored at a dinner hosted by the ADA at the Philadelphia Antiques Show on Friday, April 20.

“Peter Kenny is well known in the American furniture and decorative arts fields for having been with the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 30 years and now as the co-president of the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust,” said ADA President Steven Powers, citing Kenny’s record as a published scholar.

“Peter has done a tremendous amount of groundbreaking research. His exhibitions and publications have changed our understanding of American furniture and decorative arts, especially in the Federal and Classical eras. Beyond that, he has been generous with his knowledge,” said ADA Vice President Arthur Liverant.

Kenny joined Classical American Homes Preservation Trust in January 2015. The organization founded and chaired by Richard Hampton Jenrette is devoted to the preservation of Classical residential architecture, period furnishings and landscapes in America, primarily of the early Nineteenth Century. In his present position, Kenny oversees the management and curatorial vision at seven sites in New York City, the Hudson River Valley, North and South Carolina and St Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

Kenny retired from the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the Ruth Bigelow Wriston curator of American decorative arts and administrator of the American Wing in November 2014. While at the museum, he helped guide the ten-year renovation of the American Wing to its completion in 2012. As part of that project, he oversaw the design and installation of the American Wing’s Classical Galleries, a suite of architecturally sympathetic spaces devoted to American art created in all media between 1810 and 1845. He also oversaw the installation of the New York Dutch Room, drawn from the 1751 Daniel Pieter Winne House near Albany, N.Y.

Major exhibitions organized by the curator include “Honoré Lannuier, Parisian Cabinetmaker in Federal New York” and “Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York.” Prize-winning publications accompanied both shows.

Kenny serves on the boards of Boscobel Restoration in Garrison, N.Y., and the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wis.

For information on tickets to the ADA Award of Merit dinner, contact ADA Executive Director Judith Livingston Loto at 603-942-6498 or email info@adadealers.com.