Los Angeles County Museum of Art
From QuiltIndex
According to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's website:
"The department of costume and textiles houses an encyclopedic collection of more than fifty thousand objects, representing more than one hundred cultures and two thousand years of human creativity in the textile arts. The collection is almost equally balanced between textiles and dress and is recognized worldwide for its depth and breadth.
The collection encompasses a broad range of clothing, textiles, and accessories from pre-Columbian Latin America to contemporary couture. Particularly well represented are the European Renaissance (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and European and American textiles, accessories and fashionable dress for men, women, and children (eighteenth through twentieth centuries). The department also has outstanding collections of Islamic, South and Southeast Asian ,and Far Eastern material, including two major Iranian sixteenth-century carpets, The Ardabil and The Coronation; Indonesian textiles; and significant Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Korean holdings. European, Chinese, and Japanese ecclesiastical vestments form an important segment of the collection. Also of note are the collections of quilts, samplers, tapestries, embroideries, lace, Hollywood costume, couture clothing, and California designers.
The Costume and Textiles department was officially established on October 1, 1953 at the Museum of Science, History and Art (now the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County). This brought together in a single department the collection of costumes that were part of the History division as well as the tapestries, Chinese textiles, and American quilts and coverlets in the Decorative Arts department. Early donors included William Randolph Hearst, J. Paul Getty, Bella, Carlotta and Paul Mabury, Alice Schott, and Mr. and Mrs. Allan C. Balch. The Costume Council, the department's support group, was formed in 1954, and the continuing support of the council has been invaluable in the building of the collection.
In 1965 the department moved to the newly created Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With the generous support of the Costume Council - along with major donors including Anna Bing Arnold, Dorothy Collins Brown, Mrs. Harry Lenart, Joan Palevsky, Inger McCabe Elliott, and many other individuals - the collection has grown to more than 25,000 objects, including approximately 6,000 textiles. The collection is encyclopedic, ranging from ancient Peruvian mantles to European tapestries, from 100 B.C. to the present. With the continued support of the council and concerned individuals, the department is poised to begin its next fifty years, adding further treasures to its already stellar holdings.
The Doris Stein Research Center for Costume and Textiles 323-857-6085 e-mail: dsc@lacma.org The Doris Stein Research Center is a unique resource of the Costume and Textile department which houses the study collection, archives, library, and works on paper (such as designers’ sketches, drawings, and fashion plates). Among the center’s holdings are rare books and manuscripts from as early as the sixteenth century relevant to the study of textiles and dress. The center also maintains several important archives of individual designers (e.g. James Galanos and John P. John) as well as those on men’s clothing, patterns, quilts, and historic textiles. The center is open by appointment only."
source: http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/MWEB/about/cost_about.asp
