A week-long international conference and event series exploring the connections between textile making, domestic space, and local environments, both historically and today. Events accommodated multiple time zones and making communities.
Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection
Bisa Butler to Give Ruth Ketterer Harris Lecture
The interdisciplinary textile artist, whose quilted works feature African-American subjects, will give the annual Ruth Ketterer Harris Lecture virtually Thursday, March 18, with the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at UW–Madison.
From Hairbrush to Hairwork: A Workshop with Karen Bachmann
Samantha Comerford, Assistant Collections Manager at the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, researches 19th-century hairwork and attends a workshop to learn hairwork techniques…using her own hair!
Written in Silk: Dr. Marjon Ornstein Preserves Unique Turkish Textile
Through the Adopt-a-Textile program of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, Dr. Ornstein has supported a deeper, multi-faceted understanding of a unique, century-plus-year-old silk wall hanging from Turkey.
An Aria in Hats, Lace and Silk
Through hundreds of hours of hands-on volunteering, Sue Engstrom is giving the public, scholars and students something she never really had in her own days as an undergraduate at UW-Madison: Access to one of the most diverse and valuable textile collections in the country.
Curation Highlight: Rapid Response Mask Collecting Project
Natalie Wright, curator of the Rapid Response Mask Collecting Project, provides insights into the project’s ongoing efforts to capture the varying and vital roles that masks play in daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Sophie Pitman to Join SoHE as CDMC’s Pleasant Rowland Textile Specialist and Research Director
A cultural historian of the early modern period, Dr. Pitman will advance scholarly and educational connections with the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection in the Center for Design and Material Culture.
CDMC Conversation Series / Conversaciones de CDMC: Day of the Dead in the Time of COVID / Día de los Muertos en los Tiempos de COVID
A Spanish-language CDMC Conversation about the significance of the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico and what it was like during COVID.
CDMC Conversation Series: Erika Holst
CDMC Conversation between Illinois State Museum history curator Erika Holst and HLATC Interim Assistant Collections Manager Samantha Comerford. The two discussed the exhibition “Fashioning Illinois: 1820-1900.”
Rapid Response Mask Collecting Project
Online Launch: Fall 2020. Since March of 2020 face masks have become our central tool in the fight against COVID-19. This exhibition seeks to understand the new ways in which textiles play a critical role in our daily lives as protective face coverings. It uses a “rapid response” collecting model to select masks for the HLATC which mark this contemporary moment as historic.