Curating Fashion Exhibitions

Catalog description

Curated fashion exhibitions are fabricated sites where research practice, creative design, material culture, histories, and aesthetics converge in public display. In this course, students will learn about curatorial practice broadly, and the display of fashion artifacts more specifically, through theory and practice. We explore curation as research practice, while considering conceptual, political, economic, and aesthetic aspects of display. Research methods, archival research, analysis of primary sources, oral histories, and other forms of information gathering will be discussed and explored. In addition to individual assignments and readings, students will work collaboratively throughout the semester to curate a fashion exhibition using the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection along with other archives and collections across campus.