Current Exhibitions
The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection
February 12, 2010 – January 9, 2011
Homes and furnishings shape the human experience of everyday life. Each culture designs domestic environments that reflect its own social traditions, aesthetic preferences, political and economic circumstances, and local climate. The Art of Living highlights the historical and cultural breadth of The Textile Museum’s collection through the display of textile furnishings, including hangings, rugs, chair covers, cushions and other materials made in societies ranging from the late Roman Empire and colonial Peru to Edo-period Japan and Victorian Britain. The varied furnishing textiles in the exhibition, made to provide protection, comfort, color and pattern in homes from the ancient Mediterranean world to 20th-century America, document the lifestyles enjoyed by their original owners as well as the technical and artistic accomplishments of their creators. This exhibition provides a historical context for The Textile Museum’s second spring 2010 exhibition, Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain.
View Press Release (new window)
Press Image Request Form (new window)
Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Mary Baskett Collection
Oct. 17, 2009 – April 11, 2010
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Japanese designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto shocked the fashion world by introducing avant-garde styles that challenged received Western notions of “chic.” Informed in part by Japanese traditions such as the kimono, obi and the art of origami, these designers produced radical garments with shapes and textures often incongruous with the natural contours of the human body. Their designs-characterized by asymmetry, raw edges, unconventional construction, oversized proportions and monochromatic palettes-effectively overthrew existing norms and set the stage for the postmodernist movement in the fashion industry. Miyake, Yamamoto, and Kawakubo remain three of the most successful designers in today’s fashion world, and under their tutelage a new generation of Japanese talent has emerged.
This exhibition, which was originally shown at the Cincinnati Art Museum, will include garments from the collection of Mary Baskett, an art dealer and former curator of prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum who has been collecting and wearing Japanese high fashion since the 1960s.
Press Image Request Form (new window)
Fabrics of Feathers and Steel: The Innovation of Nuno
Oct. 17, 2009 – April 11, 2010
The Textile Museum will present Fabrics of Feathers and Steel: The Innovation of Nuno, October 17, 2009 – April 11, 2010 to complement the couture designs on display in the concurrent exhibition Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Mary Baskett Collection. Nuno (meaning “functional fabric” in Japanese) integrates traditional techniques and aesthetics with cutting-edge technologies to create some of the world’s most innovative and influential fabrics. Made out of materials as varied as steel, bamboo and bird feathers, Nuno textiles provide the starting point for fashion designers and are housed in museum collections around the world.
