PORTSMOUTH NH – Joyce Geary Volk passed away peacefully in her Portsmouth home on August 11, 2016, surrounded by her family.
She was born in San Francisco, CA, Nov. 19, 1927, the daughter of maritime attorney Joseph J. Geary and his wife, Dorothy Ash. She left in 1945 to attend Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, and received her BA in 1949. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City and worked in public relations, doing fashion publicity for Eleanor Lambert and product publicity for two advertising agencies, Young and Rubicam and BBDO. In 1953, she met her future husband, Kenneth Hohne Volk, and said it took them only two and a half weeks to decide to marry, which they did the following year. Like her father, Ken was also a maritime lawyer.
The couple had two children, a son, Christopher Hohne, and a daughter, Cynthia Holland Ash, and resided in Manhattan and Quaker Hill, a part of Pawling, NY.
In 1968, she enrolled in graduate school at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where she received her MA in 1973. Subsequently, she became a lecturer for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Guggenheim Museum. She also taught several courses in architecture and the history of decorative arts for various colleges and graduate schools in the city, and did research for collectors and dealers. She worked on and prepared several art catalogues and wrote numerous articles for trade and professional publications. Her final article was one she co-authored celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Warner House in Portsmouth, NH; the article fittingly appeared in the Fall 2016 issue of Antiques and Fine Art magazine.
She and Kenneth both wanted a working retirement when the time came, and in 1992, moved to Portsmouth. He joined the law firm of McLane, Graf, Raulerson and Middleton as a consul, and she became curator of the Warner House, a post she held from 1993 through 2010. Among the many highlights of her tenure as curator is The Warner House; A Rich and Colorful History, which she authored and edited with Consulting Editor Jeannette Hopkins in 2006. The catalogue was awarded the prestigious AASLH Leadership in History: Award of Merit in 2007. She was a member of the Portsmouth Athenaeum, where she served on several committees and curated an exhibition on Portsmouth fires and fire societies, “Going to Blazes,” in 2013. She was also a member of the Strawbery Banke Museum, the Portsmouth Historical Society, Historic New England, the Wentworth Gardner House, the Gundalow Company, the Music Hall, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Currier Museum.
Her husband died in 2012. She leaves her son Christopher and his wife Hollis Hutchens, and their two children, Emma, and her brother Chambers. She also leaves her daughter Cynthia and husband, Tom Meyerhoff, and her daughter’s three children, Charles, Clementine and Della Sainty.
In place of flowers, please make a contribution to the Warner House Association, PO Box 895, Portsmouth, NH.
