Historic Textile and Costume Collections in the Academic Setting

Abstract

Many colleges and universities with textile and apparel programs support collections of historic textiles, costumes, and related artifacts.The term "collection" can be defined as any group of objects stored in one location, whether that place is called a museum, gallery, study center, design lab, or, simply, a collection.Academic collections range in scope from small assortments of artifacts used in teaching to multiple collections in world-renowned institutions such as the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is part of the State University of New York system.Unlike museums and historical societies, whose main purposes are to collect and preserve cultural heritage, the primary mission of academic historic textile and costume collections is to support teaching and research.Teaching often supersedes research as the raison d'être.These collections function as units of an academic institution, which pays their operating costs.The purpose of this monograph is to provide an overview of academic historic textile and costume collections and to present guidelines for the management of such collections.This monograph also documents the need for adequate space and staffing for presentation to administrators. History of Academic Historic Textile and Costume CollectionsThe typical college textile and costume collection started as the teaching collection of a single faculty member to support courses and provide inspiration for textile and design students.Personal teaching collections began almost as soon as home economics departments offered courses in textiles.At the beginning of the twentieth century, units on the history of textiles and the history of costume were part of a general course in textiles (Crooks, 1905;Marlatt, 1911).Jane Fales (1911) argued for inclusion of a separate course in historic costume in home economics programs to strengthen students' design abilities.At that time, no textbooks existed for costume history.Fales recommended acquiring old engravings and fashion plates to illustrate past fashions for historic costume students.The expansion of programs, combined with the growth of the Colonial Revival movement, spurred many instructors to acquire historic examples to support teaching.Teachers typically passed these items around in class so that students could examine them.Collections in most U.S. land-grant institutions had their origins in the 20th century, from the 1930s through the 1970s.Private educational institutions began their textile and costume collections earlier.The Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, which houses a collection of over 15,000 textiles and costumes, was chartered in 1877 (Museum of Art, 2011).In land-grant universities, the collections operate as part of a specific department, usually a textiles and apparel unit.Their mission statements echo the "three-legged stool" of the land-grant university: teaching, research, and service (Duffield, 1979).In private institutions, the collections are a separate unit, often within a museum with permanent display space, for example, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and the

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