The Ethics of the International Display of Fashion in the Museum (original) (raw)
Related papers
The recent rise of the blockbuster fashion exhibition has underpinned a renewed interest in the topic of garment curation and preservation, encouraging academics from emerging disciplines, such as museum studies and fashion studies, as well as established institutions, to re-evaluate the presence of fashion in the museum. This increasing institutional and curatorial interest has led to a new research dynamics centered around the museum as an agency that can broaden and deepen our understanding of fashion.
Fashion Museology: Identifying and Contesting Fashion in Museums
In many museums, fashion is collected, displayed, and subjected to research endeavors. This reveals the interest of museums in fashionable clothing as representative of past and present style, identity and culture. In recent years, fashion has appeared with increasing frequency across museums of art and cultural history. But what accounts for this recent obsession with fashion and fashion heritage? In this paper I explore and discuss the prevalence of fashion in museums in relation to the paradigm of 'new museology' (that is, reflexive museology). I argue that museums perceive fashion as a strategy to engage with new museology, although in reality the display of fashion raises new complications. In essence, museums traditionally present an authoritarian, often mono-vocal voice of truth and neglect topics of conflict or disagreement that are equally vital parts of fashion and its heritage. I therefore consider it necessary to identify what I term a 'fashion museology' to explore and discuss the potential of fashion in museums -that is, fashion's ability to transform museums into visitor-centered forums for interpreting the complex cultural, socio-political and behavioral reality surrounding them in past and present. The paper is based on a recently conducted qualitative research project
The displays, silences, and aesthetic possibilities of museum fashion's gendered geopolitics
2014
of the Master's Degree program. Dr. Busia's mentoring in creative articulations of art and politics invigorated the arguments that originally moved me to investigate fashion at museums. Dr. Rajan offered constant support especially in the organizational process of my project. Finally, I deeply thank my family and friends for their unconditional love and patience as they helped me navigate and complete this significant stage of my life. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………………... v Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………………….. vi Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1: Museum Fashions and Politics of the Gaze……………………………………… 9 v History of Fashion in Art Museums…………………………………………………….. 14 v The Museum Gaze……………………………………………………………………………... 20 ♦ Appropriating the Gaze…………………………………………………………… 23 v The Art of the Museum………………………………………………………………………. 25 Chapter 2: Impress: Fashionably Painting Modern Identities………………………….. 28 v Fashion as Art…………………………………………………………………………………… 28 v Representations of Fashionable "Identities"……………………………………….. 34 v Fashion Language……………………………………………………………………………… 40
Fashion exhibitions are a hot trend in art and cultural heritage museums worldwide. Specialized costume and fashion museums are increasing in a number of countries. Most of the scholarly research and papers dedicated to museum fashion exhibitions and Fashion Museology are tackling the subject from a museological perspective: collecting, archiving, conserving and displaying fashion design on one end, and fashion design as a newly discovered attraction for the museum audiences on the other. This paper focuses on museum fashion exhibitions from the designer's perspective: the opportunities and the benefits for the authors themselves. Several fashion exhibitions - five visited and one curated, held from 2009 to 2014 in different museums around the world were analyzed for this paper. Museum fashion exhibitions, apart from the gains to museums and their audiences, provide the designers with opportunities to present their artistic explorations and experimentation, their creative processes, interdisciplinary collaborations, complexity and storytelling. It is as a new platform for a multi layered communication with the audience. By being exhibited in a museum, the fashion designer’s work becomes part of a specific cultural experience for the visitors. The designer's benefit, on the other hand, is a deeper relationship with the audience and a critical acclaim for their work, with recognized artistic values. Keywords: Fashion, Fashion Designer, Fashion Exhibition, Fashion Museology, Fashion Communication, Cultural Experience, Artistic Values.
Art, life, and the fashion museum: for a more solidarian exhibition practice
Fashion and Textiles
Since the turn of the last Century, fashion has entered the museum space in if not unanticipated, then clearly astounding, ways. The museum, a kind of memory institution that has as its main purpose to acquire, store and display historical and/or art objects, has become an essential, cardinal fashion space, attracting thousands of visitors. This article traces the more recent development of fashion's access to the museum, either as a kind popular and spectacular affair, or as an engagement with and exploration of handicraft and fashion as cultural artefact, discussing how fashion, art and life for long have been intimately related. While a few exhibitions will be brought forward as examples of what many contemporary fashion exhibitions entail, some of which will be described a bit more in detail, overarching and crucial aspects connected to fashion will also be touched upon. These aspects include fashion as part of a wider democratization; as part of an increasingly widespread consumptionism (Strauss 1924); as a kind of pluralistic and multifaceted mediatization; and as pure commerce. Recurring throughout the article,
Rethinking Fashion Storytelling Through Digital Archives and Immersive Museum Experiences
Springer proceedings in business and economics, 2023
The Italian fashion system is represented by a wide and valuable heritage that needs to be properly preserved and experienced by everybody, from fashion students to scholars, artisans and designers, etc. Although in the last decades there have been many attempts to create a museum dedicated specifically to Italian fashion, in the end, institutions or museums have not been able to carry out a valuable and accomplished project. One fundamental reason is represented by the Italian specificities in terms of the fashion-industry evolution and, more in general, by the complexity of the fashion system which has been built and continues to grow at the crossroads between different experiences, practices, and relations. As such, it has been studied from diverse disciplines and approaches ranging from art to design, from economics to sociology of culture, and so on. Moreover, when considering both the intangible and tangible fashion heritage, gathering them in order to preserve and share them becomes extremely difficult. The challenge is therefore to understand how to collect, preserve, and enjoy this heritage, combining the cultural pluralism of local traditions and their products, together with the creativity of artists and designers and the economic aspects of the industry, relating them all with the cultural and social features of everyday life-fashion. The aim of this paper is to address these issues starting from the preliminary reflections of the PNRR project (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, National Recovery and Resilience Plan) "Cultural heritage active innovation for next-gen sustainable society", (CHANGES aims at promoting interdisciplinary research and inter-sectorial synergies to support the development of innovative long-term strategies for the interpretation, understanding, conservation, and valorization of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. The extended partnership is composed of 11 Universities, 4 Research Institutions, 3 Advanced Studies Schools, 6 Companies, and 1 Center of Excellence (see https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/cha nges/home).) in order to discuss in detail the Spoke 2, "Creativity and Intangible Heritage" thematic line on fashion preservation and its musealization as developed by the authors of this essay.