Material Witnesses: Textiles at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Location: 17th-19th Century Europe and America, 3rd Floor (310).

A New Interactive Program Lets You Examine the Warp and Weft of Cultural History

"I've always wanted to have this feeling as if I would be hidden in the threads, and those threads had a recorded memory, and I could hear and know all the things that happened. And I guess that's what we try to do by reading clues off textiles."

Minneapolis Institute of Arts textile department curator, Lotus Stack, has been studying clues from textiles all of her life. And she's been practicing these skills at the museum for twenty years. What she brings to the collection and, ultimately, the museum audience, is an intense fascination, not only with the objects themselves, but also with the history and people behind them. As suggested in the quote above, Stack virtually inhabits these objects, gaining a kind of insight and knowledge normally reserved for the original makers, owners, and wearers--be they Peruvian villagers or European kings and queens.

Recently, Stack brought that insight to the museum's Interactive Media Group for a collaborative project--an exciting new computer presentation focusing on textiles, now on permanent view near the museum's third floor rotunda.

With the unveiling of this program, you might say that things have come full circle. Consider that the Jacquard loom, an early 19th-century invention that takes advantage of punch-cards and intricate machinery for the production of patterned cloth, is the antecedent to the computer. Now, at the close of the technology-frenzied 20th century, the Institute has produced an interactive touch-screen program that weaves the stories and teaches the essentials of textile history and technique.

Material Witnesses: Textiles at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is the eighth in the museum's award-winning series of permanent collection-based multimedia programs designed and installed for gallery visitors. It exploits the sophistication inherited from its fabric-producing predecessors in telling tales of textile use, value, and production, and demonstrating technical fundamentals.

The project concentrates on seven primary objects, chosen for the cultural, historic, geographic, and technical diversity they represent. It approaches these objects as though they were evidence--materials conveying clues that help piece together stories of daily life in a wide array of times, places, and circumstances. The objects range from a 16th-century Turkish velvet woven for a sultan's court, to a 20th-century American creation--a prime example from the innovative Fiber Art movement.

In an effort to involve the user, a simulated magnifying glass allows examination of the pieces in close detail. In addition, each object is supported by a five- to ten-minute presentation that answers questions about who made it, under what conditions and for what purposes. Seven textile experts, ranging from artist Kaffe Fassett to conservator Nobuko Kajitani, each provide succinct commentary on one of the primary objects.

Also, an additional 175 related objects from the Institute's rich and still-growing collection (witness the recent addition of the Larsen archive) are presented and discussed. Finally, five technical areas invite the museum visitor to create onscreen his or her own quilt, weaving, dyed fabric, and more. The entire program has been designed to allow its users to participate in the act of discovering textiles--and broader cultural history--by examining, questioning and doing.

While Material Witnesses may rely on metaphor to get its points across, there is a degree to which textiles--and all works of art--are literal recordings of human experience. And a keen eye coupled with an eagerness to know human beings--present and past--can yield some profound and inspired insights. As the curator happily concludes, "...in a way the threads have recorded these memories for me and do lead me into the lifestyles and the time of these people, and the excitement and joys that they had." It is hoped that Material Witnesses will do the same, bringing possibilities for intense excitement and learning to museum visitors.

Material Witnesses: Textiles at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is currently on view in the interactive learning station off the third floor east hall gallery (310). It was produced with funds generously donated by the General Mills Foundation.