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NOW OPEN!!!
Hours limited during the Summer. Exhibit will be open Monday through Friday during the Semester. For information please call 401-874-4574.
"EVERY QUILT TELLS A STORY"
Textiles in general, and quilts in particular, offer opportunities to explore humanities themes through examination of material culture. Quilts express changes in textile production through their fabrics, in aesthetic preferences, and in stories surrounding the circumstances of their making and use. Each object, from the Historic Textile & Costume Collection at URI, has been chosen because it represents a time period or technological development with a firm provenance and a story that tells much about the time, place, and people who made and used these works of art.
Quinn Hall Textile Gallery will be open Monday through Friday throughout the Spring 2025 semester.
RECENTLY CLOSED
Objects in this exhibit can be seen on this omeka site in the collection "Fashion East and West."
Fashioning East and West:
Investigating the Cross-Cultural Exchange of Materials, Methods, and Meanings
This exhibition has been designed, curated, and installed by students studying fashion and textile history and conservation in the department's master's program.
The textiles and garments on display were initially researched by students in a material culture studies course taught by Dr. Linda Welters. The material culture approach investigates the relationship between people and their possessions, examining aspects of materiality, making, history, and preservation. Material cultural studies are typically multi-disciplinary, blending ideas and approaches from history, art history, anthropology, archeology, and beyond.
In this course, garments from China, Japan, and Korea were studied in tandem with garments made in or for Western European and North American markets that borrowed design elements from the traditional dress of these cultures. Students in the department's exhibition practicum course, under the direction of instructor Rebecca Kelly, reviewed this research. They considered numerous fine arts, fashion and textile exhibitions that had explored themes of “East Meets West.” Exhibitions have often looked at exchange as being unidirectional.
The exhibition’s curatorial team expanded their thinking and consideration of these textiles and garments by looking at them from both global and regional perspectives; discussing design exchange not just from East to West but exploring the more complex and reciprocal exchanges between each culture. We also have considered the journey that these textiles took as they made their way to Rhode Island to become part of the university’s study collection.
PAST LOAN
Sampler Exhibit at the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace & Museum
Embroidered Lives: South County Samplers
and Their Stories
The Historic Textile and Costume Collection loaned a sampler to the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace & Museum for an exhibit on samplers from South County, Rhode Island. URI is fortunate to have a sampler identified as being from South Kingstown, RI.
PAST EXHIBITS
Dressed for Business: A Retrospective Look at the Suit and Beyond (1923 - 2023)
As the College of Business celebrates its 100th year the Textiles, Fashion Merchandising & Design Department offers a celebratory exhibition in the Quinn Hall Textile Gallery. Historic textiles and clothing items from the University’s collection provide a window into the past and allow us to reflect on the many changes that have occurred not only in our university community but the global world beyond in the last century.
While we are a “community of big thinkers” interested in new ways of looking at the world, the present is often informed by the past, so join us as we pause and reflect on where we have been and where we are going as the College of Business moves into the next century.
"What's in A [Designer] Name? An Investigation of Twentieth-Century Fashion Labels"
This exhibit, curated and installed by graduate students, included garments and accessories from Lucien LeLong to Issey Miyake, with Givenchy and YSL in between.
See the collection of of Twentieth-Century Fashion Designers posted on this omeka site for the research papers by students in Spring 2021 TMD 570 - Material Culture: 20th-Century Designers.