Afterlives explores the many lives of objects and what happens to textiles after they enter the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. From a remarkable quilt made out of carefully saved 19th-century American cigar silks, and a child’s feedsack dress lovingly crafted and then saved on a family farm, to an intricate robe from Turkmenistan that traveled halfway around the world, material things carry traces of people and things through past, present, and future in our Collection. Both poetic and practical, the exhibition explores what these treasures can teach us if we pay attention to their stories.
Support for this exhibition comes from the Anonymous Fund.
