Dear Nancy, Arlene and fellow Arachnids, I was also puzzled by the claim that there are four great lace collections and wondered what they were. I had it in mind to contact the Wall Street Journal writer and ask her to tell me. However, I imagine this was information contained in a press packet from the museum, so it might be better asked of the curators, or possibly the Textilmuseum in St. Gallen. (I did feel that it might be a little bit embarrassing, me being a big time lace aficionado, having to ask a reporter for the Wall Street Journal what the four big lace collections were.) But, I havenât had the time to ask about this because the Threads of Power exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York is keeping me really busy. This is a great exhibit, including 151 pieces from the Textilmuseum in St. Gallen, Switzerland. I encourage everyone to try to see it. It is strong on 17th century lace and has pieces of astoundingly fine thread that allows for a great deal of definition to tiny figures of animals, mermen, etc. I have never seen such fine thread and it has really made me think. This is certainly the best and biggest lace exhibit to happen in New York since the Cooper-Hewitt show in 1982. The first floor is devoted to 17th century lace which is a transformative experience. But, it also includes a wonderful piece by Elena Kanagy-Loux. She was inspired by the fact that there are two very similar needle lace depictions of the story of Judith and Holofernes, one in the show, and one in the Metropolitan Museum collection. She was asked to make a piece of lace and keep track of the hours. She chose to do a very imaginative collar depicting Judith and Holofernes in the scallops. (Recall that she made an original collar for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be a gift from Columbia University.) It took over 200 hours to make the collar for the Bard. She filmed the process and there is a speeded up video of her working it. This is actually the first thing that visitors see when they enter the exhibit. On the second floor there is more 17th century lace, be still my beating heart, under the concept of focusing on the Habsburgâs lace. Included is a table cover with representations of the Golden Fleece that Is identical to the one in the V & A. I say this without fear of contradiction because I actually looked up the one at the V & A to check its measurements and they are the same. In fact, the information on the piece on the V & Aâs website is that there is an identical one in St. Gallen. The one at the V & A entered the collection in 1880 and the one at the Bard was bought at auction in 2006. What is the story behind this? What auction? Were there two or more originally? Is one a copy? Also on the second floor is an area on the French lace industry of the 17th and 18th century with some breath- taking lappets, again in incredibly fine thread. There is an area on ecclesiastical lace which includes the most prized possession of the Textilmuseum, a needle lace piece, possibly an antependium, dating from the late 17th century with tiny figures in 17th century dress incorporating gold thread. The third floor deals with the Ikle familyâs use of the collection to assist them in making authentic looking lace on the Schiffli machine. Also on the third floor is contemporary fashion made of machine made lace including Michelle Obamaâs dress that she wore to the 2009 inauguration. This was an extremely important loan to the Bard, although, for my part, I find my interest flagging when we get to machine made lace. In fact, a number of people have told me that they cannot take in the entire exhibit in one visit, and since they are lace people, I think they are talking about the first and second floor. Personally, I was so exhausted by the first floor that I had to traverse the second floor by moving a Bard provided folding museum stool along with me. I still feel I have not really absorbed it all. The exhibit includes oil paintings of people wearing the lace, an original pattern book, a print of a 17th century lace shop and all sorts of didactic material which I would find most interesting if it were not for the fact that I have only enough energy to focus on the lace itself. There are videos showing how lace is made. The scholarly work on putting on the exhibit is very impressive. There is also a catalog that is over 400 pages long with articles by lace scholars that we know and others that we do not know. There is an attempt to include lace made and worn by non-Europeans. In the exhibit there is an emphasis on the lacemakers themselves. The Bard held a class about the lacemakers and the members of the class researched them and produced digital material that enhances the exhibit. There are kiosks with a screen that allows you to interact with the material. Also there are black holes with glass surfaces in various places in the museum which allow you to down load an audio file with more material about the lacemakers. (I have to ask for the assistance of the guards to do this successfully.) This emphasis on the lacemakers led the Bard to have a very nice event, a Lacemakersâ Day in which about 30 of us, from all over joined together to see the exhibit, hear a talk by Maggie Hensel Brown and to be fed a small repast. We had people from New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Denver, California and Canada. Another lacemaker inclusion is the Lacemakersâ Studio on the fourth floor. This is a special area built out just for the Brooklyn Lace Guild to have an Artist Residency. I confess that when I realized that it had to be stocked with members of the group every weekend, Saturday and Sunday 1-5 for three months, I felt a cold terror and wondered if we could do it. But, it has been tremendous fun! An endless crowd of people come in to see us and talk to us. The crowd includes curators, some of whom have flown to New York just to see the show, artists and enthusiastic young people all demanding to know how they can learn to make lace. I am encouraging them to take classes from the Lace Museum online. A surprising number of the young people claim that they learned lacemaking from YouTubes during the pandemic. There are various events, including a symposium on November 18th, a performance about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her collars, and a conversation with menswear designer Emily Adams Bode that will âexplore the importance of the archive in contemporary lace fashion and how the craft of lacemaking connects us to our past.â https://www.bgc.bard.edu/exhibitions/exhibitions/118/threads-of-power As for the original question about the three other great lace collections, I will agree with Nancy about the V&A, but suggest that the collection of the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels might be a contender, also, as a museum chauvinist I will go with the Met as an important collection. Actually the Cooper-Hewitt has a very good collection, as well. But, I think it is a very hard question. Many collections are virtually hidden. Might there be a Spanish collection? A Vatican collection? Historically, it seems that the French had lace in the Museum of Decorative Arts, but I can never find any trace of it. Has it been dispersed, or is it hiding in storage? I think the Viennese museum MAK has a very interesting collection. They tend to emphasize their lace industry of the late 19th and early 20th century, but what else do they have? I happened upon a small unannounced exhibit there a decade or more ago with fantastic older lace and still cannot figure out what this exhibit was. (There was an Adam and Eve that continues to haunt my dreams.) There are so many museums with different kinds of collections of varying accessibility that there are probably stunning collections out there that we donât even know about. Who else wants to hazard a guess about the four great lace collections in the world? Devon
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