Obituary of A. Patricia “Pat” Bartinique

Pat Bartinique of Madison NJ, passed peacefully away on Monday, November 3, surrounded by family and her husband, Jeffrey, in Ewing, NJ.

It was a different time. When Pat was 9 years old, she would walk from her home on Grier Ave in Elizabeth to the train station and, by herself, take the train from Elizabeth, NJ to Penn Station in NYC. She then took the subway to Carnegie Hall on 57th St. to help her father during rehearsal with the West New York Boy Choir. Pat would pass the music out and, if needed, provide piano accompaniment.

Pat loved her dad dearly. Leo Bartinique, her father, had studied music composition and theory at Carnegie Mellon. In his career, he was Jimmy Durante's accompanist. Additionally, he was music director of the RC cathedral on Staten Island as well as music director at St Mary's church in Elizabeth. He died in 1964 at age 65, Pat's senior year at Douglas College where she graduated Summa Cum Laude, double majoring in English and Music Theory. During that period, Pat also took on choir director duties and tutoring her father's students before she went on to Purdue University for her MA in English Literature, specializing in 20th C. American Novel. From there, Pat went to NYU on a teachership while pursuing her doctorate and along the way completed a second and third master's degree in British Literature, specializing in Shakespeare and WB Yeats. That's where she met her future husband, Jeffrey Preston.

Pat and Jeffrey joined with others to become involved in saving Craftsman Farms, what was to become Gustav Stickley's family home, from developers and bulldozers. Gustav Stickley was one of the important, maybe most important, figures in the early 20th C. American Arts & Crafts movement, a design movement that embraced a lifestyle emphasizing home, hearth, and craftsman ideals. In June 1992, Pat presented to the Board of Craftsman Farms her original idea for the first ever comprehensive exhibition of Gustav Stickley's work. She would guest curate and write the catalog. In November, Rita Reif, editor of the Arts & Leisure section of the NYT, wrote a glowing half-page review of "Gustav Stickley: His Craft." The exhibition consisted of over a hundred pieces of his furniture and design, including ephemera, metal work, lighting, early photographs, and even original patents of Gustav Stickley's work. According to Ted Lytwyn, a Craftsman Farms board member, "This exhibition put Craftsman Farms on the map."  People came from not only around the country, but from other countries in the world. It was also reviewed on NPR, by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Craftsman Farms received an important Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge grant for future restoration, conservation, and production of a professionally produced video of Gustav Stickley -- his history and place in the American Arts & Crafts movement and 20th C. design. The catalog went through several printings during that time, paying for critically needed conservation and restoration to the original tile roof. 

In 1995, Pat was invited by Robert DeFalco to guest-curate the exhibition, "Kindred Styles: the Arts & Crafts Furniture of Charles P. Limbert," at his Gallery 532 on Wooster Street in SoHo, NYC. Rita Reif, who had said at the time, "I never review an exhibition by the same curator twice," after a private preview, found it so compelling, she yielded and wrote her half-page review in the Sunday New York Times, "If Stickley Was Hertz, Then Limbert Was Avis." The exhibition preview party featured a Juilliard quartet playing the music from "Three Penny Opera" by Kurt Weill. Some of the guests included people from Andy Warhol's Factory, and it was said that collectors Richard Gere, Bruce Willis, Paul Morrissey, producer/actress Penny Marshall, and other celebrities were there. DeFalco was ecstatic over the turnout and national response this exhibition generated, and he said people had told him it was one of the liveliest, most enjoyable exhibitions they'd been to in SoHo. The catalog that Pat produced went quickly to multiple printings and helped defray some of the costs incurred. Both of these exhibitions had front-page exposure, authored by Pat, in "The Arts & Crafts Weekly" ("The Bee"), giving national attention to the arts and crafts world. From the first annual (1988) National Arts & Crafts Conference that Bruce Johnson put together at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, Pat offered her variety of talents, knowledge, and teaching skills, from giving lectures, leading discussion groups, helping Bruce formulate and realize the book club, and even guest-curating mini-exhibitions, culling objects from the two just-mentioned exhibitions she guest-curated. She did not do this once for merely a couple of years, but she wore these hats continuously, attending every Conference from the very first through 2025. 

Though busy preparing for each year's upcoming National Conference at Grove Park Inn, her main job was as a full professor at Essex County College in Newark, NJ. She taught there for 56 years, missing only two days of work in the entire span of her career. Her classes ran the gamut from speech and composition to Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats, British Literature, to the 20th C. American Novel, as well as Drama and History of Theatre. Many of her students went on to programs at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Duke, NYU, Stanford and other outstanding schools. It was kind of a family tradition, her mother had taught Latin, French, and English for over 50 years.

Music was Pat's oldest love. She was actively involved in musical performance her entire life, studying piano from a very young age and ending with over 40 years deeply involved as a soprano, as well as production manager of Masterwork Chorus which performed, and continues performing, a tapestry of music from Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven to Aaron Copland, Carl Orff, and Bob Dylan. They perform throughout NJ, as well as at Avery Fisher Hall, The Kennedy Center in Washington, and finish every year (since 1961) with Handel's "Messiah" at Carnegie Hall.  

Pat is survived by her husband, Jeffrey Preston.

Relatives and friends were invited to pay their respects during a gathering at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, November 10, 2025 in the vestibule at St. Vincent Martyr Church, 26 Green Village Road, Madison, NJ immediately followed by a 10:30 a.m. Mass of Christian Burial at the same location.

Interment was at St. Vincent’s Cemetery, Madison.

In lieu of gifts or flowers, donations may be made to Masterwork Chorus, PO Box 2167, Morristown, NJ 07962; or Craftsman Farms, 2352 NJ-10, Morris Plains, NJ 07950.