Interview with Curator Thierry-Maxime Lori

by Ingrid Mida

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (Photo courtesy of the MMFA)

Thierry-Maxime Loriot curated the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier which opened recently at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.   Loriot joined the Museum in 2008 as a research assistant and in 2009 assisted Guest Curator Emma Lavigne with the exhibition Imagine: The Peace Ballad of John & Yoko. Prior to joining the museum, Loriot was a fashion model who walked pret-a-porter fashion shows in New York, Milan and Paris and worked with leading photographers like Mario Testino. His extensive knowledge of the international fashion scene led Nathalie Bondil, the MMFA Director and Chief Curator to invite him to curate the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier. Loriot also edited the exhibition catalogue.

Ingrid Mida: Gaultier has been quoted as saying that “Fashion is not art.” How does this reconcile with the fact that his work is being presented as art within the Musee des Beaux Art?  Do you see fashion as art?

Thierry-Maxime Loriot: Fashion can be art if we speak about a corpus like the one of Jean Paul Gaultier. As Andy Warhol said ; "With Yves Saint Laurent, Gaultier is the only one to really make art with clothes, to see clothes as a whole, by the way they assemble them". I think coming from Warhol, it is a very strong statement. When you see the craftsmanship and all the work and how imaginative Gaultier is, I consider him a real artist. He designed more than 150 collections forhimself, 15 for Hermès, countless collaborations with movie directors from Peter Greenaway to Luc Besson, dance choreographers, pop stars and all the videos he collaborated on, no other designer has ever achieved that much, but what is most fascinating is that it is always innovative, always new, never boring, which is exceptional. He iniates the trends rather than following them, which explains why he is still here after 35 years and dressing the new generation of Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Rihanna…He has also influenced some very important contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle, Erwin Wurm and Pierre & Gilles to name a few.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (Photo courtesy of the MMFA)

Ingrid:  Gaultier has been acknowledged for celebrating alternative beauty and incorporating models of larger sizes into his runway shows. Although there were models of different ethnicities and genders included in the show, I did not see any plus size mannequins or mannequins that appeared to be older. Was this a conscious decision based on cost?

Thierry: We are very lucky to have the collaboration of Jolicoeur International who created all the mannequins in the exhibition. Gaultier wanted to show different skin tones and recreate them. As for plus size models, Gaultier often offered the clothes to the models after the show because they were made to measure for them like Stella Ellis and Velvet d’Amour. We can see the fashion shows they were in at the exhibition. We have translated this inclusion of everyone, of mixing genders, cultures and sizes through video clips when the clothes were not available. Also, to show underwear on a plus-size mannequin would not have been the best display, because it always looks better on a real human. You can understand Gaultier’s strong social message when you see that he gave power to women by giving them the choice to wear a corset, and by giving the skirt and haute couture to men, all the while mixing cultures and paying tribute to different religions, which shows how generous and open minded his fashion is.

Ingrid: In choosing items to display from 35 years of work, was there something that you wished you could have included but had to leave out?

Thierry: Luckily no! It was a challenge to choose from all the archives and of course, to make a selection and a final choice. The final selection was donewith Gaultier, because it was very important to have feedback from him as the exhibiton is not a retrospective rather more of a contemporary installation. I had the unique chance to work with a living artist who shared with me his intentions behind his work, thus avoiding misinterpretation. He was very generous with spending days and days working with me. Though quite busy with other projects, he always approached the exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with a smile, answering my millions of questions about his work, techniques, andinfluences. As he said, it is the biggest fashion show and collection he ever did! The exhibition had to reflect his personality, and from the comments we have heard since the opening, I think we succeeded !

Ingrid: I understand that you have worked as a model yourself. Do you think that this influences your work as a curator?

Thierry: Probably. Coming from the fashion world was a very positive experience that gave me the opportunity to refect this world from the inside and to meet so many incredible people. I included some prints from great photographers that I have worked with when I was a model and who I admired a lot like Mario Testino, Peter Lindbergh, Ellen Von Unwerth, Nathaniel Goldberg and MaxAbadian, but also other great masters like Richard Avedon, Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, Steven Klein, Steven Meisel... Fashion is about image, and some of the most iconic images on view are by Paolo Roversi. Fashion photography translates very well what the clothes are about yet, it is rarely shown to the general public, and I wanted to show also how fashion photographers from different generations, from Helmut Newton to Miles Aldridge, have been influenced by Gaultier’s work.

Ingrid:  What is your favourite garment or aspect of the display?

Thierry: I love all the galleries for different reasons. This exhibition is not a classic fashion exhibition. It had to reflect the sense of humour of Gaultier, but also his creative genius. I love the Boudoir with the corset in the padded satin box, which contains all the different corsets but also the two iconic ones on view worn by Madonna for the Blond Ambition Tour in 1990. One piece also that is spectacular is the leopard « skin » dress from the haute couture collection Russia (FW 97-98), which is a trompe-l’œil, made of glassbeads with the claws made of strass, which took more than 1060 hours to create. Extraordinary pieces like this can create the same emotion as seeing a sculpture or a painting. This exhibition presents a very unique chance to view each piece up close, especially with regard to haute couture dresses that for most have never been exhibited and shown to the public, thus providing premier backstage access to the virtuosity and savoir-faire of Paris haute couture.

Ingrid: After hearing you, Nathalie, and Jean Paul Gaultier speak at the press conference, I had a deeper appreciation for the underlying humanist message that there was no singular standard of beauty. However, I'm not sure that this important message will be evident to visitors because they are entranced by the beauty of the gowns, the animated mannequins and the cacophony of sounds, lights and action. How do you see think this message is conveyed within the exhibition?

Thierry: When you discover Gaultier's universe, you realize how open and generous his fashion is. He invented and surely broke taboos and barriers through gender-bending as reflected in the images of Tanel and the men’s skirt, but also empowered and gave freedom to a liberated contemporary womanin control of her life and her sexuality. This is shown of course through Jean Paul Gaultier's collaborations with Madonna, but is also quite evident when you see Helen Mirren in "The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover" or in his shows that feature women wearing corsets or revealing clothes. Of particular note are the animated mannequins by UBU, because the casting shows real people of different origins, and ages spanning 18 to 65, thus reflecting a very diverse crowd, a mirror of society, the society in which we live. Old, young, along with different beauties from different countries are all part of the fashion world of Jean Paul Gaultier.

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto who is inspired by the intersection of fashion and art. She lectures about fashion and art and will be the keynote speaker at the Costume Society of America mid-west conference in the fall.

Interview with Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Nathalie Bondil, JP Gaultier, Thierry Maxime Loriot at the MMFA

by Ingrid Mida

For the past ten years, art historian Nathalie Bondil has been Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where she has curated many art exhibitions featuring the work of Picasso, Van Dongen and other artists. Ms. Bondil launched new programming by inviting fashion into the MMFA, with first ever retrospectives of the work of Yves Saint Laurent and Denis Gagnon. In 2007, Nathalie Bondil was appointed Director of the Museum. In 2008, she received the insignia of the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Republic and on June 15, 2011, she received the title of Chevaliere of the Ordre National du Quebec.

Nathalie Bondil initiated the exhibition of The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk which recently opened at the MMFA. The following is an excerpt of my interview with Ms. Bondil at the museum on June 13, 2011.

Ingrid: The MMFA seems to be the only museum in Canada to initiate and curate exhibitions of fashion designers. In 2008, you exhibited Yves Saint Laurent’s work and today, you are presenting Jean Paul Gaultier’s work. How is it that your mandate includes fashion?

Nathalie: We can do whatever we want to do and from my point of view that includes presenting the work of artists with a strong message. The fashions that Jean Paul Gaultier creates really says so much about the world, the society in which we live and I think that is very relevant for us. What Gaultier says about beauty and about taste is something that is very healthy, very relevant and very necessary.

Ingrid: I found it so refreshing this morning when Gaultier talked about beauty having no specific shape or look. Is that what attracted you to his work?

Nathalie: Completely. It is his humanist side and in fact, it is much more the sociological aspect of his work that I think is very important. It is so fresh as you say to say that everybody is welcome to wear his clothes: big, fat, old, whatever.

I think that it is our duty at the museum to open other doors.  If you don’t have this critical look, if you don’t give people the tools to understand another way to consider the aesthetic of fashion, I think that you haven’t done your job.

This exhibition is not about branding, it is not about La Maison Jean Paul Gaultier. It is about Jean Paul Gaultier’s humanist vision of the society. And it is about very high values, about universal values beyond fashion.

What is interesting with him is that he is not just a fashion couturier, but he also collaborates with cinema, for theatre, for the avant garde, for the very popular rock stars. He is very curious and his mind is open and he has kept this child eye. He is always sincerely enchanted by people. I can say this is not a posture. It is not an attitude.

He is very humble. He has no flag, but in fact, when you consider his couture from the beginning until now, it is very coherent and consistent, and beyond humour, beyond provocation, there is also a very deep message.

Ingrid: Is that what defines JPG as an artist for you – that his pieces have a message?

Nathalie: Yes, absolutely. He has a very strong imagination that can reach us beyond fashion. You are not obliged to be a fashionista to be attracted to Gaultier because he has so many diverse interests in terms of multi-media and inspirations. He is not a stylist trapped within the discourse of fashion.

One proof is that he first said no to an exhibition. He did not want to make a kind of cemetery exhibition. He wanted to have an adventure, a new creation, to invent a new collaboration. This is what excites him, to make something different. He has so much imagination. He does not want to repeat himself.  He does not have this narcissism towards the past. In fact, now he is still completely projected towards the future. And for him, this event is an installation, more a creation, something new.

Jean Paul Gaultier Couture Collection (Courtesy of the MMFA)

Ingrid: I read that he once said “I don’t make works of art” and that “Fashion is not art”. Nevertheless, you have defined him as a contemporary artist.

Nathalie: He can have his own ideas. I have no problem with that. We worked with him as a contemporary artist. I told you he is always in the process of creation, never any repetition. And in my point of view, it is art.

It is art because haute couture has a sophistication of the milieu. As someone from outside, I was really, really impressed by the fact that all these couturiers have so much pressure. They must create on a very regular basis these new collections in a fierce competition atmosphere. At the same time they must also meet a commercial viability. There are no other artists who can support such pressure. It is so demanding in terms of excellence and so fascinating in terms of realization that I don’t understand why people say it is not art.

Ingrid: Is there a favourite part of the exhibition? Is there something that really resonates with you?

Nathalie: My favourite part of the exhibition is the man himself - Jean Paul Gaultier, the artist.

Ingrid: After I saw the McQueen show, I was wondering how you were going to live up to that standard, because it was quite unusual.

Nathalie: I very much admired what McQueen did. I did not see the exhibition yet and I will go next week. McQueen is very dark and Jean Paul Gaultier is like joy, optimism. They have very different sensibilities of what is a human being. One is like dark and one is like light.

For Gaultier, fashion is for real people. McQueen is not for real people. His work is fabulous - like sculpture, but you cannot live in it. There is a corset is in wood, but you cannot move in wood.  And with that dress painted by spray guns projections, it is like the woman is attacked. Gaultier said he would have done it with real painters - like a dance, like an interaction with human people.

Ingrid: Some people say that McQueen’s work was misogynist, whereas it is the opposite for Jean Paul Gaultier. He seems to love women.

Nathalie: Completely. Yes, he loves not just women, but everyone.

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto. She also lectures about the intersection of art and fashion.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk

by Ingrid Mida

When Jean Paul Gaultier was first approached by Nathalie Bondil, the director and chief curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, about doing an exhibition of his work, he said no. “For me, it would be a funeral,” said Gaultier. But Ms. Bondil persisted, because she considered Gaultier to be a contemporary artist with a subtle but important message about beauty having no singular shape, age or sexual orientation. “He offers an open-minded vision of society, a crazy, sensitive, funny, sassy world in which everyone can assert his or her own identity, a world without discrimination, a unique 'fusion couture'”. The result of her vision and the collaborative efforts of her creative team is the exhibition “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk”.

“Fashion exhibitions can be really dead,” said Ms. Bondil and “Jean Paul Gaultier said it should be really alive”. To this end, exhibition curator Thierry-Maxime Loriot collaborated with a Quebec theatre producers Denis Marleau and Stephanie Jasmin to create a new type of mannequin with animated faces. Bought to life by video projection onto a three-dimensional sculpted mask, these mannequins stare into space, blink, look away, sing, and speak in both French and English. In scripts that evoke the sentiments of Gaultier, they say things like:  “ I am what I am;” “Je suis que je suis”;  “I am the woman I want to be”.

Animated Mannequin from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

This innovative presentation of clothing highlights Gaultier’s belief that “there is not only one type of beauty.” The models are based on real people, including one of Gaultier that greets visitors at the top of the stairs. Their subtle but real flaws, such as moles and not so perfect teeth, are replicated exactly and their life-like presence adds a sense of surreal whimsy to the installation.

Instead of a chronological survey of Gaultier’s thirty-five year career, the exhibition is presented thematically. The six parts include The Odyssey (the world of sailors, mermaids and virgins); The Boudoir (the influence of the corset); Skin Deep (Gaultier’s fascination with sex and skin), Eurostar (elegant women surrounded by fashionable punks), Urban Jungle (the blending of ethnic influences and global inspiration), and Metropolis (collaborations with artists of film, theatre, music and dance and futuristic designs).

There are about 120 ensembles for both men and women mainly from the couture collections and also from the pret-a-porter line. There also are photographs, sketches, runway videos and film clips that add up to a bold and vibrant presentation of the designer’s work. This is not an elegant refined presentation like the MMFA’s 2008 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition; rather, it is a colorful, lively and, at times, chaotic trip through thirty-five years of Gaultier’s work. It is fun, fresh and filled with joie de vivre – like Jean Paul Gaultier himself.

Urban Jungle Gallery at The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

Considerable effort has gone into often over-looked details like labeling, which is bilingual and comprehensive. The gallery labels clearly explain the thematic precepts of each section.  As well, some labels for garments include information on how many hours the ensemble took to create. For example, in the first gallery, called Odyssey, there is a chiffon and lame lace gown with matching top with appliques. This particular gown (shown in the photo below), which was from Gaultier’s haute couture spring summer collection of 2007, took 315 hours to create. Such information adds another dimension of appreciation for the artistry and dedication demanded of couture.

Virgins Collection from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

Although a few items are behind glass (including Madonna’s Blonde Ambition corsets which are on loan), most are not and it is possible to get close enough to see the level of craftsmanship involved. Curator Nathalie Bondlin said “It is not possible to understand the excellence of haute couture unless you can see it up close. As a museum, we should show objects that are not otherwise accessible.”

An enormous 424 page exhibition catalogue was compiled by curator Thierry Maxime Loriot and includes over 500 illustrations and many interviews with Gaultier’s mentors, muses and colleagues. Essays by Suzie Menkes and Valerie Steele as well as a timeline of Gaultier’s career and a complete bibliography are included in this weighty tome.

Cage Collection from The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier

As groundbreaking as this installation is, it wasn’t until I heard Jean Paul Gaultier speak about his vision of beauty that I really appreciated what drives this designer.  To Gaultier, beauty has no singular standard and is not defined by size, age, gender or sexual orientation. His passionate commitment to be inclusive, to find the beauty within each person and not be limited by the seemingly skeletal standard of a tall, blonde clothes hanger was refreshing to my ears. “Fashion is for everybody”.

And yet, I am not confident that this important premise will reveal itself to most visitors to the exhibition. The title of the installation “From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” does not reference beauty or inclusion, nor does it suggest any deeper level of meaning. Because the exhibition itself is so whimsical and fun with its cacophony of sounds and visual delights, I suspect only a few will understand the subtle conceptual premise.  That is a shame because everyone could benefit from hearing Jean Paul Gaultier say: “Be yourself. Have confidence in yourself. Live your dream.”

This exhibition continues at the MMFA in Montreal until October 2, 2011. Thereafter it will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (November 13, 2011 - February 12, 2012), The  Fine Art Museum of San Francisco, de Young (March 24 - August 19, 2012), Fundacion Mapfre in Madrid (September 26 - November 18, 2012) and Kunsthal Rotterdam in the Netherlands (February 9 - May 12, 2013).

Photo credits: Ingrid Mida, copyright 2011

Ingrid Mida is an artist, writer and researcher based in Toronto. She is represented by Loop Gallery in Toronto and also  lectures about the intersection of art and fashion.

Alexander McQueen: Art, Beauty, and the Unique Body

Gallery View. Cabinet of Curiosities, Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speaking Sunday June 19 at 3pm at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is model and athlete Aimee Mullins in conversation with Harold Koda, curator in charge at the Costume Institute. Mullins, who is a double-amputee, has collaborated with a range of artists and designers, including Alexander McQueen as well as Nick Knight and Matthew Barney—who cast her in Cremaster 3 wearing fantastical prosthesis perhaps most notably a pair of non-functional “glass” prosthesis. In 1998, she walked the runway for Givenchy (then designed by McQueen) wearing specially designed hand-carved boots/prosthesis, which are included in the Met exhibition “Savage Beauty.” Much has been written about her collaborations with McQueen, Knight and Barney—and while many, including Mullins herself, interpret as a mean towards greater visibility, others see it as spectacularizing "the disabled body." (These debates are evident in academic writings on the topic, which includes Vivian Sobchack’s and Marquard Smith’s articles in "TheProsthetic Impulse and Caroline Evans’s Fashion at the Edge.)

What has perhaps remained unaddressed and what I think is brought to the fore specifically by her collaboration with McQueen is the way it blurs the lines between medical prosthesis and fashion. This blurring is evident if we think of the history of Western undergarments, such as the corsets (some of which were orthopedic in kind), bustles, or cage crinolines, or more simply extreme high-heels or eyeglasses.

Francesca

Aimee Mullins, McQueen for Givenchy Show, AW 1998

Survivors: Textiles in the Museum of International Folk Art Collection—An Interview with Bobbie Sumberg

by Mae Colburn A typewriter, two Kuba Masks from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a world map in the Museum of International Folk Art textile collection room

“It’s my version of a protective amulet,” said textile curator Bobbie Sumberg of a poster taped to the back of the door in the Museum of International Folk Art’s textile collection room. The poster features color images of thirty-five bat species known to occur in the western United States, among them the pallid bat, a downy creature with a pink snout, striated ears, and delicate wings. “Bats eat insects,” she continued, “and insects eat textiles. It’s apotropaic.”

When I initially approached Bobbie about an interview, I proposed a conversation about the nexus between curation, fashion, and sustainability. Bats weren’t originally part of the agenda, but when we entered the collection, our discussion turned to textile storage, then to insects, and then logically to bats. Bobbie heads a textile collection of over 20,000 objects, so the fact that pest control is a priority comes as no surprise. The collection is housed in an expansive room below the museum. On one side are flat textiles, rolled so as to avoid wrinkles. On the other are shoes, garments, and headgear organized in closets and plastic containers. Jewelry and various other pieces are stored in drawers in the center of the room. A world map hangs on the far wall directly opposite Bobbie’s bat poster.

On the day that I visited the collection, Bobbie was working with two volunteers to label and catalog new acquisitions: a set of colorful Mexican Saltillo blankets and a Lybian robe donated to the museum by a former Peace Corps volunteer. “Is it kiddywampus?” asked one of the volunteers as she began rolling a Saltillo blanket. Bobbie turned to me and explained that handwoven textiles, which constitute the vast majority of collection, are rarely straight or flat. The collection is composed of pieces that were worn and used, produced with the dual purpose of form and function. Most of the objects in the collection were at one point exposed to some combination of heat, moisture, aridity, insects, animals, extreme wear, and the relentless human impulse to recut and repurpose. In this sense, the collection is composed of ‘survivors,’ textiles that individuals considered significant enough to keep, textiles from closets around the world.

Volunteers sew tags onto newly acquired Mexican Saltillo Blankets

Bobbie Sumberg: When you ask somebody what [textiles] they have of their family, it’s often that people say “I’ve been carrying around my grandmother’s quilts for 30 years.” I ask, “Why do you carry those things around with you?” Because there’s a connection, a really strong connection with family, with tactile, with the idea of somebody creating something that literally keeps you warm, and figuratively keeps you warm. Not to make anything of this, but when I was a graduate student I did a proto-study with my family, which is a large family so I had a nice little focus group, and one of the questions was “What do you have that you keep and you don’t wear or don’t use?” And there are all kinds of reasons why people keep stuff, which I assumed was the case because when I looked at my own closet, it was the same thing. I had things that people made for me that I never wear. How could you get rid of something like that?

Mae Colburn: What you brought up about the closet, about keeping, is really interesting in the context of the museum because…

BS: Because we have 57 closets.

MC: There we were sitting amid one of the largest folk art collections in the United States discussing our closets, our personal collections. I asked Bobbie to provide some background on the museum collection, specifically on the distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘local’ dress versus ‘cosmopolitan’ fashion items, a distinction that Bobbie discussed in her most recent publication Textiles: Collection of the Museum of International Folk Art.

BS: The distinction comes from some work that I did as a graduate student with my major professor Joanne Eicher at the University of Minnesota. She was editing a volume called Dress and Ethnic Identity published by Berg publishers. There was a discussion in the field of clothing and textiles about terminology, and the use of ‘costume’ and the use of ‘western’ versus ‘nonwestern dress,’ and so it was her intention to create some terminology and some vocabulary that is both more accurate of the situation in the world and less pejorative.

To me the difference is that ‘ethnic’ or ‘local’ is really about what people wear that has developed in their specific context – environmental, geographical, cultural context – and usually has something to do with how they conceive of themselves both as an individual and as a member of a social cultural gender group. Cosmopolitan [dress] was produced much more by the fashion system. The other way that I characterize the collection is as things that people make for their own use.

A card file drawer labeled “pest control” in the textile collection room.

MC: I’d like to ask you about the collection as a whole – how it was formed – and about the exhibition that was mounted in 2003, Handmade Planet: Florence Dibell Bartlett’s Vision for the Museum of International Folk Art. I’m curious whether you could describe this vision.

BS: She was a fairly complex person from what I know about her and her life and her intentions. What she saw when she was traveling (she did a lot of traveling, she came from a very wealthy family) in the 1920s and 30s was that the artistry that people had to create what they used and needed in their lives was fast disappearing. So she collected what she thought of as disappearing arts in order to preserve them, and things that she perceived as being integral to the culture of wherever she was. Her idea in establishing the museum was that seeing and experiencing the art of the world would bring people together. How I kind of paraphrase it, and phrases that I’ve used a lot in conceptualizing things and talking to people is, ‘the particular in the universal.’ We all wear clothes. We all use an immense number of textiles in our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, and the urge to embellish is pretty universal, and yet it happens in a very particular context.

MC: I’m noticing an ongoing theme here: the Museum of International Folk Art, Handmade Planet, and then there’s Material World, the current exhibit. All of these have a global scope. To you, what are the distinct benefits of dealing with textiles and dress on this global context?

BS: I would go back to the idea of the particular in the universal because I think that people look at clothing and textiles, ‘dress’ as we call it, in really different ways. One of my goals is to help bring the idea of cloth to peoples’ consciousness. As I always say, we get dressed every day, but we don’t really think that much about the significance of what our choices are when it comes to the textiles that surround us. I think a lot of people don’t always see what surrounds them. It’s one of my goals to bring [textiles] up to a different level of consciousness.

MC: Just to tie up, do you have any closing thoughts about the topic that I approached you about initially – sustainability, curation, and fashion? How can a collection such as this be understood within the context of fashion and sustainability?

BS: Sometimes I think ‘why’? What are we doing? It’s so frivolous. It reaches so few people. And yet as a repository for techniques, for instance, that in two generations get lost – they can be recreated and relearned from the original pieces. That has been done in the past here at this museum particularly with northern New Mexico weavers, dyers, and embroiderers. The collection has been used to aid in the revival of some of the historic designs. And so there’s a lot of value in a collection like this just on that level: keeping things and keeping them available.

Mae Colburn is an independent textile researcher and writer and professional seamstress based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Bobbie Sumberg is curator of textiles and costume at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Previous exhibitions include Needles and Pins: Textiles and Tools and Power Dressing: Men's Fashion and Prestige in Africa. Her most recent exhibition, on view at the museum through August 2011, is titled Material World: Textiles and Dress from the Collection.