Museum Studies Commons^™

Ties That Bind The Daily Lives Of Carpet Traders: An Ethnographic Exploration Of The Everyday Lives Of Carpet Traders Through Their Kinship Ties, Moral Economies, And Acts Of Everyday Diplomacy In Iran, The Netherlands, Belgium, And Germany, Felix Van Den Belt

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

On August 6, 2019, international sanctions on Iran were reintroduced. Through my personal quest to understand the carpet trade, written as an ethnographic exploration, this thesis follows the everyday life trajectories of carpet traders in the context of Iran, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. These life trajectories are made comprehensible based on the themes: Kinship Ties, Moral Economy, and Everyday Diplomacy. In doing this, it contributes to the understanding of global trade networks from the perspective of globalization from below. Few ethnographies are written on the social lives of contemporary carpet traders, but there are many assumptions and opinions on …

Project To Recover Prehispanic Textile Techniques In Peru: A Brief Review, From Its Initiation To Today, Yuki Seo

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

I have lived in Peru for approximately 20 years, devoted to research and the study of prehispanic textiles. Because of the rich heritage and enormous quantity of tangible textile patrimony that exists in this country, I have chosen Peru to be able to pursue several interests. Over time, I worked in different museums, which motivated me to promote the study, understanding and recovery of prehispanic techniques. I proposed to give them life, so that they would be appreciated in these times. Along the way, I have met admirable self-taught persons who come from my country, Japan. This led me to …

Wool Sells Itself: Tracing The Movement Of Navajo-Raised Wools, Emily Winter

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Every June for the last eight years, a coalition of commercial wool buyers, the Diné College Land Grant Office, and the Black Mesa Water Coalition has hosted a multi-site wool buy in the Navajo Nation of New Mexico/Arizona. Historically, the primary outlets for Navajos to sell their wool were trading posts and border towns, which paid far below market price. Over the last several years, the wool buy has effectively doubled the price per pound paid to Navajo producers by bringing them into direct contact with buyers. In June 2019, an estimated 160,000 pounds of wool were purchased from over …

India In Situ: Textile History And Practice, A Team Approach, Annin Barrett, Carol Bier, Anna Jolly, Louise W. Mackie, Barbara Setsu Pickett

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Five textile specialists from various backgrounds came together to explore shared interests in Indian fabrics, histories, and architectural patterns. Guided by Rahul Jain’s extraordinary scholarship and generosity, we visited weaving workshops producing exquisite fabric and metallic yarn in our quest to understand the naqsha system for drawloom patterning. In Cholapur and Varanasi, we studied drawlooms set up to weave velvet, lampas, and samite, and a distinguished naqshaband demonstrated the making of a naqsha that provides the design for drawloom lifts. We examined rare historic textiles in New Delhi’s National Museum, Ahmedabad’s Calico Museum of Textiles, Varanasi’s Bharat Kala Bhavan Museum, …

Clothing The Black Body In Slavery, Wanett Clyde

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

After suffering the traumas of capture, enslavement, and the ship’s journey from their homeland, newly arrived Black people, along with struggling to understand and cope with their reduced circumstances, were often pulled in multiple directions with regard to their appearance.

Stripped of garments that represented their native culture and forbidden to practice their personal grooming habits, slaves were now reliant on their owners for care. Once a slave was purchased, it was in the best interest of the master and mistress to protect their investment by providing them with the essentials. Chief among those necessities was clothing.

This presentation will …

The Arts Of Urgency: Textile Practices And Truth-Telling, Catherine Dormor

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

To think of the arts of urgency is to think about tactics for making public realities and ‘truths’. It is to ask how art and artists can express horror, suffering, collective and individual trauma with intelligence, rigour, truthfulness, integrity and ethics? In this paper I explore the role of textile as a set of practices deployed as acts of resistance, focusing on the work of Chinese artist Lin Tianmiao and the US artist collective behind the Pussyhat Project (Jayna Zweimann, Krista Suh and Kat Doyle). Both deploy a tactics of spatiality and collaborative action to produce discourse around female disempowerment …

The Nantucket Looms: Historicism And Modernism In An Island Cottage Industry, Jennifer Nieling

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Social and political upheavals of the 1960s spurred many reactions in the arts, from optimistic modernism to nostalgic historicism, that resulted in a widespread revival of handcraft. On Nantucket, the 1960s craft revival coincided with a renaissance of the island itself, as it looked towards the past to shape its future. The wharf transformed and historical tourism was promoted, the island a time capsule of its nineteenth-century glory days as a whaling port. In 1961, the Nantucket Historical Trust renovated the Jared Coffin House, a historic whaling merchant’s mansion turned hotel, decorating it with custom reproduction interior textiles. A weaving …

The State Of Traditional Albanian Kilims, Their Motifs And Narratives, Alexis Zoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Albania is a cultural crossroads. Its history is rooted in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. It has been part of the Republic of Venice and part of the Ottoman Empire. It has maintained its own identity and language in spite of many occupiers. Like many of its neighbors, it also has a rich weaving tradition influenced by hundreds of years under Ottoman rule. However, the knowledge of the old ways of this craft is quickly dying out. There are splits in knowledge and documented information between pre-communist Albania and Communist Albania and post-Communist Albania.

In the mid twentieth century …

Four Artists: My Angels And Mentor, Polly Barton

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Interwoven into my life at the loom are the stories of four women: a weaver, a painter, an embroiderer, and a fiber artist. Their histories have guided and pulled me forward in my own growth as an artist. Yet it is to their art that I feel a heartfelt, visceral, and almost spiritual resonance. I would like to present to the TSA conference in 2020 my research into the lives of Sumiko Deguchi (1883-1952), Helen Frankenthaler (1928- 2011), Adya van Rees-Dutilh (1876- 1959), and Pat Hickman (b.1935).

As an artist who has wound, tied, dyed, and woven silk into contemporary …

Intertwining The Past And The Present Through Textiles, Experiences In The Communities, A Vision From Peru, Rommel Angeles Falcón

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

In recent years in Perú, a number of initiatives have been independently developed by collective groups, taking prehispanic textile heritage as a reference and beginning to replicate and teach ancient techniques. These initiatives were born from diverse interests, in many cases based on the experiences of weavers from the Andean highlands, textile traditions of the coast and a notable interest on the part of young people. Resist dye techniques, warp-faced weaving and tapestry have been most fully developed. This presentation reviews the principle initiatives developed in the Lima region, the ‘norte chico’ region and the far north coast.

Contemporary Oneida Beadwork: Revitalized Identity Through An “Adopted” Art Form, Beverly Gordon

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

A relatively new type of raised beadwork has “become a way of life” for the Oneida people of Wisconsin. “Beading extravaganzas” are important social events, and beadwork adorns ritual objects such as graduation stoles. This examination of contemporary Oneida beadwork functions as an intriguing update to Ruth Phillip’s 1990 TSA paper, “Moccasins into Slippers: Traditions and Transformations in Nineteenth-Century Woodlands Indian Textiles.” Phillips documented how indigenous forms “morphed” into objects made for sale to non-natives at sites such as Niagara Falls. While even tourist art was part of native cultural identity, its greatest significance was as a source of income …

Queer Political Organization In Israel, And Palestine: Shifting Away From Homonationalism, Tristan Blaisdell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this project, I present research I have done on the issue of pink washing queer Israeli and Palestinian citizens and homonationalism within Israel and Palestine. I also create an exhibit brief outlining a hypothetical museum exhibit on this topic to be put up at the museum of culture and environment. The first section outlines the history and theory of my exhibit, and a brief personal statement where I talk about my interest in the subject and where I’m coming from before I design this exhibit. My theory is built off concepts of diaspora, home, belonging, queer identity, and intersectionality …

The Reckoning That Seized Museums From The Aesthetic : How Novel Iterations Of Anti-Neutrality Activism Condemned Institutionalized White Supremacy While Misconstrued As Cancel Culture, Emily Griffin

MA Theses

Non-profit art museums are arbiters of cultural value and simultaneously supporters of artistic freedom. During 2020, a resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement amplified anti- neutrality activist groups, demanding museums address the embedded violence within their institutional practices. While some physical protests occurred, due to the COVID-19 pandemic digital activism thrived through Instagram campaigns. A portion of research for thesis involved surveying over fifty Instagram accounts dedicated to hold the art world discourse in some regard. Additionally, this thesis’ methodology included remaining conversant on the activity regarding three museums: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of …

From Spectacle To Collectible : A Reappraisal Of Katherine Dreier And Juliana Force's Pioneering Impact To Bolster The Ascendancy Of Modern Art In America, Caroline Holt Yarbrough

MA Theses

My thesis analyzes the critical and pioneering role that Katherine Dreier, Juliana Force, and other New York-based female cultural promoters played in advancing the education, acceptance, and appreciation of modern art in America. By illuminating the strategies these women used to accomplish their objectives to support contemporary artists and demystify modern art to the public, as well as elucidating the barriers they overcame as women driving for change in a male-dominated society, I seek to answer the fundamental questions of how and why women were able to play such a central role in creating the canon of modern art in …

Front Matter

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

S. R. Koehler And The Etching Revival In The United States: Toward An “American” Tradition Of Printmaking, Katie Larson

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

The Drop Sinister: Harry Wilson Watrous’ Visualization Of The One-Drop Rule, Mey-Yen Moriuchi

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

When William T. Wiley And Bruce Nauman Wrote To H.C. Westermann, David Mccarthy

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Kim Gordon: The Bonfire, Annie Dell’Aria

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.

Alphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau / Nouvelle Femme, Matthew Finn

Art Inquiries

No abstract provided.