Upcoming Events

“On the Bias: Textile and Indigenous Art in Dialog with the Social Fabric Exhibit.”

April 27th, 2023, 4:30-5:30pm. Klarman Hall, KG70.

Catered reception at the Rare and Manuscript Collections to follow.

Join us for this talk by Christian Ayne Crouch, the dean of graduate studies and associate professor of Historical Studies and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College, and the director of the Center for Indigenous Studies.

In dialogue with the current library exhibit Social Fabric, Crouch adds Indigenous perspectives to the exhibit’s presentation of relationships of stolen labor, racial constructions, and the interwoven Black and white experiences of New England’s industrial production. Using examples of material culture, past and present, she discusses three themes: the transformation of Indigenous experience as a result of the textile industry, the use of mass-market textiles by Indigenous peoples as a tool of survival, and the engagement of contemporary Native artists on global aesthetic sourcing and practice.

Cornell Fashion & Textile Collection

Threads of Life, Love, and Loss: An HIV/AIDS Story

August 15 – December 2, 2022

A reception will be held Thursday, October 13 from 5-7 pm with an exhibit tour, film screening, and Q&A panel.

“Threads of Life, Love, & Loss: An HIV/AIDS Story” is a collaboration between the Cornell Fashion and Textile Collection and Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection that will be part of the Threads of History exhibitions and the Cornell Council for the Arts 2022 Biennial. This exhibition explores how fashion, textiles, and archives can be activated in the struggle for health equity amidst an ongoing global health crisis that has lasted more than 40 years and robbed families, friends, and communities of upwards of 40 million lives. We focus on one story of many affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Mark Goldstaub (1951 – 1988), his partner Edmund Wojcik (1955 – 1995), and the many lives they touched, to show how cloth and creative expression have the transformative potential to raise awareness, record histories, memorialize, destigmatize, and make positive change in the world.

Curated by Professor Denise N. Green, Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Director of the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC), Michael Mamp of the Department of Textiles, Apparel Design and Merchandising at LSU, and Brenda Marston, Curator of Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collection

Threads of History

Textiles at Cornell