Description
Book SynopsisCollections of textileshistoric costume, quilts, needlework samplers, and the likehave benefited greatly from the digital turn in museum and archival work. Both institutional online repositories and collections-based social media sites have fostered unprecedented access to textile collections that have traditionally been marginalized in museums. How can curators, interpreters, and collections managers make best use of these new opportunities?To answer this question, the author worked with sites including the Great Lakes Quilt Center at the Michigan State University Museum, the Design Center at Philadelphia University, the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the WGBH Boston Media Library and Archives, as well as user-curated social sites online such as Tumblr and Polyvore, to create four compelling case studies on the preservation, access, curation, and interpretation of textile objects. The book explores: The nature of digital mater
Trade Review"Textile Collections: Preservation, Access, Curation and Interpretation in a Digital Age will delight and intrigue the textile archive specialist and non-specialist alike. Sikarskie fluidly merges pop culture with curatorial best practice, raising intriguing and provocative possibilities of the digital age in the curation and interpretation of textile collections." -- Sarah Scatturo, Conservator, The Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
“Anyone responsible for collections of historic or ethnic dress and textiles will find Textile Collections both useful and thought-provoking. Amanda Sikarskie offers specific ways more audiences might be engaged with historic dress and textiles. She describes examples of digital technologies and social networking websites that are being employed by youth to informally curate fashion collections and suggests ways museum professionals might adapt these ideas. If you have never heard of or visited the social networking website Tumblr or the social commerce website Polyvore, I guarantee you will want to explore them after you read her chapter on curation. Sikarskie not only urges historians, curators and collections managers responsible for historic textiles and dress to move beyond information sharing and to begin collaborating with their audiences, she shows them how they might do so." -- Patricia Cox Crews, Emeritus Professor of Textiles, Universiry of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Founding Director Emeritus, International Quilt Study Center & Museum
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Ada Lovelace and Weaving the Digital Chapter One: Preservation Chapter Two: Access Chapter Three: Curation Chapter Four: Interpretation Post-script: Meditations on Kate Middleton’s Wedding Dress Bibliography Index About the Author
