What I Learned at the Texas Fashion Collection

Generally, I like to attain practical knowledge of things. I believe we can only learn so much from studying without attaining hands-on experience. That is why I have loved my time at the Texas Fashion Collection. I have been able to get hands-on experience with objects and work in an environment that is exactly the type of collection I one day hope to start a career at. I consider myself lucky that this opportunity exists right down the street from me on campus. 

Practical skills are my main takeaway from this position. I have learned how to handle garments correctly, mount them for display, and catalog them in a library database. I now know that you should always lift garments from their strongest points and seams, usually the shoulders. I know that museum-grade mannequins are heavy and that I should wear comfortable shoes and pants on days I know it will be a physical job. And now I know how to make a padded hanger that is best to hang delicate objects on (sounds silly but I quite enjoyed making them.)

Working around the collection and my director has also widened my view and scope of how these objects can be studied. My research at the fashion collection has now progressed into my own personal research for my thesis, and it is a topic I enjoy. I don’t think I would have landed here without working these ideas and topics out at the collection with the garments. I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed my time at the Texas Fashion Collection, and I look forward to continuing working there in the spring. 

Amon Carter Docent Training Final Update

Hi everyone! 

Wow, what a challenging task it is to articulate all the things I learned from my internship at the Amon Carter in their Docent Training Program. I have a few bullet points I'd like to share from my time there to sum up the most impactful parts of my experience there.

• For several months each week, I practiced my tour stops with my peers, which gave me the invaluable opportunity to practice using museum teaching strategies in the museum galleries instead of in theory or in the studio-based art classes I teach at UNT. During these practice sessions, I also saw other approaches which helped me gather more perspective as a participant of a tour. 
• It goes without saying that I learned so much about the Amon Carter's collection of objects, their educational programmatic offerings, and the values of the institution itself. I also understand how to integrate standard museum docent standards into building my own tour, so much so that I feel knowledgeable enough about docent standards that I could apply the practices/have a well- informed starting point at any museum institution I plan to volunteer with in the future.
• The intangible, informal learning opportunities at the Amon Carter were rich and plentiful! Building relationships with populations outside of academia was so rewarding. I learned not just about the Amon Carter's collection, but about how each area of their educational department collaborates to bring the local community into the museum, whether physically bringing them in, seeking them out, or ensuring they are represented more in the space. After learning about their library, I have recommended so many of my artist friends and students to get out there and utilize this amazing resource! 
• Balancing both the macro and micro when it comes to building a tour. By macro I mean the overall theme and ideas of the tour and by micro I mean the individual objects themselves and all of the various contextual information that supports the tour theme. I am very detail oriented by nature and often get caught up in the process or details of something, so it was a challenge to return to the macro. I began to see it as a gift though, not something confining or overwhelming, but more like something to return to find connections between pieces that seem so unrelated.
• Working behind the scenes, I got a sense of how the Amon Carter is working tirelessly behind the scenes to transform the way their collection is presented to visitors. Operations at a museum work SLOWLY, but they are trying to make things happen as quickly as they can! One example is they do not hang a group of works solely by its chronology, type of work, or artist. The work is displayed thematically and in such a way that viewers can make connections between work made hundreds of years ago and work being made today by contemporary artists. I believe this kind of thoughtful curation and design results in our ability to interpret and contribute to the future of art objects, too.
• The Amon Carter houses a large collection of works depicting Indigenous populations that is romanticized, discriminatory, historically incorrect, or told from the perspective of colonizers. In all education departments, this is addressed to inform the way educators and docents talk about those objects. Things like awareness of language, being sensitive to how a patron may identify, and the white washed lenses for which these works are often viewed through are all things we discussed in my docent training and educational sessions I attended. 

Thank you for reading and wishing you all the best as you continue on in your program or enter the work force! This is my last semester in the Graduate Art Museum Edu Cert program, I have loved getting to know so many of you this semester. Stay in touch, can't wait to see all the awesome work you all do in the future! I hope to see you at the AC when I am volunteering one day :)

Kay

Mary McFadden at the Texas Fashion Collection

At the beginning of my internship, I was informed that I would begin research for an exhibition that would one day be online on Google Arts & Culture. My director had a few ideas she wanted me to explore that were designer-driven exhibits. The designer I ultimately decided upon is Mary McFadden, a womenswear designer from New York that worked from the 1970s to the 1990s. Though I had never heard of her previously, I have since been wrapped up in her designs and the narrative that she constructed around her work and image. 

We have quite a few beautiful pieces from Mary McFadden in the collection. She created very simple, loosely constructed garments that were visually interesting by their textile treatment. McFadden considered herself a fine artist and would construct the canvas (textile) first before creating a design. She is infamous for her “Marii” pleats which were a synthetic version of Mariano Fortuny’s silk pleats that he popularized in the first half of the century. McFadden’s pleats were synthetic and heat set so that they would always keep their shape and be able to easily hang in a closet. 

What is most interesting to me about McFadden is her interest in cultural mining. Each of her collections is thematic based on a different period or culture. Some examples are “Mosaics of Pompeii and Herculaneum,” “American Indian,” and “Ottoman Sultans.” There is a lot to unpack here. Questions of legitimacy, cultural appropriation, influencer culture, and constructed narrative have formed from my research. I have decided to pursue this topic for my thesis research, which is good news because I had previously been floundering and unable to land on a specific idea. There is not much research done on Mary McFadden so I hope to bring something new and interesting to the table. 

Skirt ensemble by Mary McFadden (1970/1979)

 

Cocktail dress by Mary McFadden (1982) 

Favorite Tour Stop Development at the Amon Carter

Hi folks!

On November 11th, I gave the final version of my demonstration tour to my peers, supervisor, and a few museum visitors that joined the tour unexpectedly. I was filled with nerves for many reasons: my peers are a knowledgeable group who know much more about the collection than I do, my memory recall often fails me, and I wasn't sure if the level of participation and interpretation I integrated into my tour would be well received by my audience.

With any institution I am part of, it is really important to me to feel like I can be myself and as if what I bring to the table is valued. Regularly, my peers and supervisor reassured me that my approach to tour stop development was creative and innovative. The approaches I took were ones that I use in the classroom while teaching or when making work: I use thoughtful questioning and embodiment to help people relate to the work in ways that are meaningful to them. In another class I am taking, our focus this semester has been how to weave empathy into building museum programs. Naturally I found I was considering that content when building my tour stops as well. For this blog post, I will focus on one of my stops that I am particularly excited about and got encouraging responses to. Normally, stops are 5 minutes max, but for this one, I spend a bit more time with the work. As a reminder from my first blog post, the title and theme of my tour is Choices: Radicalism in the Everyday.

We enter the mezzanine and I lead the group to Ruth Asawa's suspended sculpture (fig 1 & 2). As a way to get grounded together and feel the strange presence of this sculpture, I invite them to find a single spot on the piece and focus there for up to one minute. What they find is that the sculpture gently, quietly, and slowly sways and turns as it gravitates above its platform. This quality of the work something that is difficult to notice when you aren't truly present with it for an extended amount of time. I invite the group to tell me what they notice about the work. As they tell me what they notice, I paraphrase back to the group to check for clarity. Next, I invite them to imitate the motions the artist used to create the work to give them an idea of how labor intensive these sculptures are. In one hand, pretend you have a dowel, and in the other, straight iron wire. Asawa would wrap, and wrap, and wrap the strands of iron wire around the dowel until she had enough loops to crochet the beginnings of a form like you are seeing here (fig 3). When people talk about her work, they use words like: ghostly, transparent, and gravity. What else comes to mind? The responses are so varied - some are: feminine, gestational, gravity, micro view of a rain drop breaking, macro view of the universe, seed pods, and soft but also hard. From here, I mention the following contextual information:

• Asawa held multiple intersecting identities as a Japanese American woman with immigrant parents. and it's likely she held other identities that we don't about. She faced many obstacles over her lifetime because of others' perception of her.
• In the hysteria following the outbreak of World War II in 1942, she was incarcerated at an internment camp. There she met Disney animators that encouraged her curiosity and interest in art.
• When she attempted to be hired as a student teacher in Milwaukee to complete her college degree, no one would hire her because of residual hostility and discrimination against Japanese Americans following WWII. Not being able to find work influenced her decision to attend an alternative art school in North Carolina where she developed her philosophies and approach to making work.
• It goes without saying that she, like many other non cisgender men, experienced sexism within the male-dominated modern art world.
• At Black Mountain College in North Carolina, she met and married her husband and when determining where they would start a family, they considered locations they believed would be most tolerant of an interracial couple.
• They ended up in San Fransisco and had 6 children. When you google "Ruth Asawa," you will see images of her working on one of these forms within a form and her children are working alongside her (fig. 4) For her, there was no separation between work, life, and art. It was all intertwined and she worked constantly.
• Despite all of the challenges I just laid out, she said: “I hold no hostilities for what happened; I blame no one. Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the Internment, and I like who I am." I relate her words to the theme of my tour (Choices: Radicalism in the Everyday). Despite hardship and adversity, she chose to seek out and/or make a community to be part of. 

As the culmination to this tour stop, I give the opportunity to reflect on this mysterious and mystifying piece by utilizing a loose version of Project Zero's "I used to think....now I think" critical thinking strategy. It prompts participants to reflect on the contextual information given about the artist. Does knowing more about the person who made the work result in a deeper connection with the work? Maybe even result in some level of empathy within them? This tour stop was really well received and I can't wait to see how the next group responds. Thank you for reading about this process, I welcome any feedback! 

Fig 1. Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), Untitled (S.453, Hanging Three-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form), ca. 1957–59, iron wire. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas,
© The Estate of Ruth Asawa, Courtesy The Estate of Ruth Asawa and David Zwirner.

Fig 3. Imogen Cunningham Ruth Asawa Working on Her Wire Sculpture, Gelatin Silver Print, 1956, Amon Carter Website, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased with funds from the Ruth Carter Stevenson Acquisition Endowment © Imogen Cunningham Trust

Fig 2. Installation view. Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), Untitled (S.453, Hanging Three-Lobed, Three-Layered Continuous Form within a Form), ca. 1957–59, iron wire. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas,
© The Estate of Ruth Asawa, Courtesy The Estate of Ruth Asawa and David Zwirner.

Fig 4. Imogen Cunningham Ruth Asawa at Work with Children, Gelatin Silver Print, 1957, MoMA Website. 
© 2021 Estate of Imogen Cunningham

Sources: 

Chase, M. (2020, April 7). Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa. Chronicle Books, San Fransisco, CA. 

Excerpts from Ruth Asawa of forms and growth, (2016, May 26). Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5eyKMEQizY

Internment, Ruth Asawa, (2020, July 31). Retrieved September 10, 2021, from https://ruthasawa.com/.

La Force, T. (2020, July 20). The Japanese-American Sculptor Who, Despite Persecution Made Her Mark, The New York Times Style Magazine, Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/t-magazine/ruth-asawa.html

Snyder, R. (Producer & Director). (1978). Ruth Asawa On Her Forms and Materials [Film]. USA: Master & Masterworks Productions, Inc. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.sfmoma.org/watch/ruth-asawa-on-her-forms-and-materials/

The I Used to Think... Now I Think... thinking routine was developed by Project Zero, a research center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Retrieved from http://www.pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/I%20Used%20to%20Think%20-%20Now%20I%20Think_1.pdf

Introduction to The Texas Fashion Collection

Hello! I’m Macy Shackelford and I have the amazing opportunity to complete my internship as a Graduate Assistant at the Texas Fashion Collection. I have met with the director, Annette Becker, before and been around the collection but never worked there. My focus of research is on historic costume and fashion, and I am still trying to navigate what that might look like in my professional career. One goal while working at the collection is attaining a full, rounded knowledge of how a fashion collection runs and operates. Though I have an idea, I’m excited to see it play out in front of me as well as learn. Another goal is that I will learn the practical aspects of working with objects: how to handle, mount, and catalog them.

My duties working at the collection will mainly involve cataloging new objects using the University’s library interface as well as assisting in the photo studio with the documentation of said objects that have not been photographed before. Working in the photo studio is a very physical job. We have museum-grade mannequins that are not light. They are diverse though; white, brown, black, thin, and fuller-figured. Since Annette has become director of the collection, one of her goals has been to diversify the holdings as well as how they are presented. One new acquisition we recently photographed falls in line with this goal. It is a women’s silk suit made by Bethany Yellowtail, an indigenous fashion designer. It’s printed with images of repeating elk teeth. Traditionally, real elk teeth would be sewn onto the fabric, but she has updated the design with this digital imagery. I forgot to take a picture of our suit, but I found an example online that I’ve shown below. 

I have felt like a kid in a candy store working at the collection. Rows and rows of gowns, suits, boxes of shoes fill up the main collection warehouse. It has been so fulfilling to peruse the stacks and see something new every day I’m there. With over 18,000 objects it would be impossible to see everything while I’m here, but the idea is exciting. I feel very lucky to be able to get a close look at these objects and then assist the collection with digitizing them so that anyone can also see them. 

Suit by Bethany Yellowtail

Texas Fashion Collection

Texas Fashion Collection 

Meadows Museum - Final Fall Update (See You In Spring)

Hello everyone!

Here is my last update this fall on my time with the Meadows Museum (I’ll be back in the spring). When I was first hired, I came into the position hoping to gain a better understanding of how education departments operate, and I absolutely have. Through both the MMSC and tour scheduling, I have had exposure to what has to be considered in planning events, how to manage timelines, who to communicate with and how, how to interact with security when scheduling, and the list goes on. Even if I have not been directly operating within these areas, I have been exposed to them and have been able to make connections to other departments. I have interacted more with other departments than I have at other institutions, and I will likely be working with the museum’s collections manager Anne Lenhart to gain some experience in collections/registrar work.

I was very also interested in what opportunities being on a university campus would provide the Meadows Museum. Interestingly, there is not a particularly strong connection between the museum and SMU’s student body (limited to a couple of art history professors occasionally visiting with small classes), and a part of my projects has been working on developing a better relationship. Through the MMSC I am able to assist in developing new connections to SMU’s student body with the end goal of producing a product that will be associated with the Meadows Museum - specifically a podcast that deals with their unique collection and those that work for and with the institution. The project will discuss jobs that are not necessarily known by the public while also providing insight into people with fascinating careers who are not recognized outside of the museum community. For example, Alton Bowman is an extremely prolific furniture and frame conservator who is very well known amongst museum conservation in the Dallas area, but people outside those departments may not even know who he is.

I have definitely had to learn how to work within a collection with a specific focus, and this has been done primarily through the MMSC where I have had to choose how to examine or focus on an artwork, what guest speakers to bring in, and how to encourage students to engage with the material.

I’m looking forward to returning and sharing more about my experience in the spring! Happy holidays everyone~

Mid Fall Semester Update - Meadows Museum

Hello everyone!

Things at the Meadows Museum are trucking along! Since my first update, I have continued working with the Student Collective on our podcast project and we have progressed pretty well. The collective has spoken to four out of our five planned guests and I am in the process of scheduling our spring meeting dates. The guests we have spoken to so far are: Meadows Museum’s collections manager Anne Lenhart, Meadows Museum’s curator Amanda Dotseth, Texas Fashion Collection director Annette Becker, woodworker, and furniture/frame conservator Alton Bowman - and art conservator Claire Berry will speak in the spring. Interviews with these speakers will hopefully be scheduled soon! As we have learned more about Portrait of a Lady I have been thinking more about the narrative and goals of the podcast, and I am very excited to see what direction the collective wants to take the project in the spring. I am allowing the collective members to have control over narrative direction by picking a focus along with the number of episodes and the episode(s) length with the goal of them selecting specific audio clips to be put into the final product. It’s definitely a learning curve both in understanding my position within the education department while also figuring out how to produce a podcast. Just the technology and recording setup research alone has taken up more time than I expected!

Tour scheduling and associated communications continue as always, but we have had to work through quite a few hiccups. I’ve lost track of how many times the system has been restructured. We don’t have specific software designed for tour scheduling and so the workarounds we have had to organize are complex with a number of little steps, but I think we have reached a stronger system through the tried and true method of trial and error. Tour requests have been heavier than expected, and the museum will be opening docent-led tours to all in the spring, so we expect to see a large increase in requests. Luckily, the education department is happy to have a new hire who will be assisting with managing tours!

I’m coming up on my last day at the museum before winter break and I’m in a rush to make sure everything is organized enough for me to find my footing when I come back in the spring. I can’t wait to share everything I have learned with y’all!