American Home Furnishings Hall of Fame Names 1st Curator

September 21, 2018  by Laurie Northington in Business Strategy, Industry   

With experience in the conservation and study of texts and objects, as well as research, teaching and public outreach, Hughes has joined the Hall of Fame after serving as a visiting research associate at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.

A native of High Point, Hughes also presented public talks and evening lectures for the university’s faculty of arts and humanities.

“As the industry’s historian, Dr. Hughes’ duties include preservation and expansion of our memorabilia and historic collections, digitizing our documents, guiding the development of the industry’s timeline history, and supervision of our proprietary oral history initiative,” said Jeff Child, president of the Hall of Fame Foundation board of directors. “In addition, he is taking a leading role in the development of exhibits for the industry and the public.”

“Dr. Hughes has begun to collaborate with industry-related museums, research bodies and foundations. Among his first priorities has been to update our current storage with an emphasis on both traditional preservation and digitization in order to produce an online catalogue of our holdings. It’s all part of laying the groundwork for pursuing a permanent home in the near future,” added Child.

Hughes was awarded his Ph.D. from Trinity College Dublin in 2017.  His doctoral thesis, (Not) Everything Ends in Tears: Individuals, Communities, and Peacemaking in the Íslendingasögur, examined themes of conflict resolution and of individual and national identity in Iceland during the Commonwealth period.  In addition, he worked with Trinity College Dublin’s School of Anatomy and with the National Museum of Ireland as part of both a Masters-level research project and a broader public outreach programme focused on the relationship between the Medieval Irish and Norse.