Image left: Anna VA Polesny, International Levi’s, 1973. Denim hand embroidered with cotton thread.
Image right: Bill Cunningham, Griffin Mask, 1963. Molded, stitched, and glued feathers, sparterie, wire, jersey, and velour.
Textiles Close Up
Off the Wall: American Art to Wear at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Wednesday, September 29th
6:00 PM Eastern / 3:00 PM Pacific
$10 TSA Members / $15 nonmembers. You will receive a Zoom link in your registration confirmation email. To become a TSA member and support programs like this, join here.
A recording will be available to everyone who registers for 7 days after the event for later viewing.
DESCRIPTION:
Join curator and TSA member Dilys Blum for an illustrated discussion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s landmark exhibition Art Off the Wall: American Art to Wear. The exhibition featured 115 works by 62 of the art-to-wear movement’s pioneering artists, most of whom came of age between San Francisco’s “Summer of Love” in 1967 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The American art-to-wear movement has been long overlooked and marginalized by art, textile, dress, and craft historians, so this exhibition sought to reframe it as a new vision concurrent with emerging fiber art. The exhibition explored American art-to-wear through the eyes of its first generation and in the context of the dramatic artistic, cultural, social, and political changes that took place from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s.
Opened on November 19, 2019, the exhibition originally was scheduled to run through May 17, 2020, but it was forced to close on March 13, 2020, due to the pandemic. This lecture looks back at the exhibition, which drew from the promised gift of 48 works from the collection of Julie Schafler Dale and featured additional loans from artists, private collectors, and museums. The exhibition was accompanied by a book co-published by Yale University Press, with essays by Dilys Blum, Mary Schoeser, and Julie Schafler Dale.
BIO:
Dilys Blum is The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She has organized major, groundbreaking exhibitions including Shocking: The Art and Fashion of Elsa Schiaparelli (2003-2004) and Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love (2014), which has been revised for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Peabody Essex Museum, opening in 2021-2022. She has published widely on textiles, costume, and fashion.
For questions about the program or registration, contact info@textilesocietyofamerica.org.
Textiles Close Up is a series of study-workshops launched in 2013 that provides opportunities to examine textiles in leading museum and private collections, guided by renowned experts. As precautions for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrict travel and gathering, Textiles Close Up has moved online, to give a new type of access and learning opportunities.
*Refund Policy: There are no refunds for Textiles Close Up registration
