Lauren Brincat

I am a New York City and Long Island based museum professional with a passion for old stuff. I received my BA in history and anthropology from the College of William and Mary and an MA in American material culture from the University of Delaware.

I really want to own a historic house, but I’m afraid of ghosts. I have a weakness for 17th- and 18th-century chairs, delftware, kasten, high chests, and historic houses of all time periods. I wish I could collect early American decorative arts, but instead I own a lot of purses, cute notebooks, and portraits of unknown 19th-century women (apparently I like those too). I’m typically the youngest person in the room, and you can usually find me crawling under some old piece of furniture.

New Netherland is my bailiwick and Petrus Stuyvesant is my spirit animal. My MA thesis is called John Bowne’s Flushing: Material Life on a Dutch Frontier, 1645-1700. If I talk a lot about Flushing, that’s why. I have a cat named Anya, and If I wasn’t working in museum’s, I’d be playing for the Yankees.