Loretta Hines Howard dating history

Details

Loretta Hines Howard (1904 — April 2, 1982) was an American artist and collector. Howard was a collector of Neapolitan crèche figures from the 18th-century. In 1957, Howard began what would become a forty-year tradition of decorating the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Christmas tree with items from her créche collection, integrating the Roman Catholic practice of creating nativity scenes with the European protestant tradition of tree decoration. In the early 1960s, she donated her collection to the museum.