Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
From QuiltIndex
Overview of the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts
"The department currently houses more than 27,000 objects, including samplers, fans, tapestries, Japanese textiles, and ancient Peruvian textiles and costumes.
When the Museum was incorporated in 1870, Boston was the center of the United States textile industry, and the Museum's founders thought it essential to form a textile collection to provide access to examples of good design. A prime mover was Denman Waldo Ross, Harvard professor of design and a Museum Trustee who in 1890 began to build the collection with his gifts of Coptic and Andean textiles; European, Turkish, Indian, and Persian silk weavings; Indonesian batiks; and Middle Eastern rugs. Between 1889 and 1915 the Museum also acquired many superb examples of Japanese textiles and robes, mainly donated by William Sturgis Bigelow, a noted connoisseur of Japanese art. In 1930, the Museum became the first general art museum to establish a department devoted solely to textile-related artifacts.
Gertrude Townsend, the department's first curator, strengthened weaker areas in 1938 by adding the Mrs. Philip Lehman Collection of textiles and costume accessories, which included examples of sixteenth through eighteenth-century European embroideries and knitting. With the Elizabeth Day McCormick Collection, acquired in 1943–53, the Museum received its most important and extensive collection of costumes, accessories, needlework, costume books, and prints. Other gifts and purchases expanded the holdings of high fashion, regional dress, and ecclesiastical garments. The Esther Oldham Collection, one of the world's greatest collections of fans, was donated to the Museum in 1976. Twentieth-century and African textiles have been a focus of recent acquisitions.
In 2004, the department was named the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts, in honor of a major bequest from Roberta Gleiter Logie, one of the department's most loyal and ardent supporters.
The first curator of jewelry in an American art museum was appointed at the MFA in 2006, thanks to a generous endowment by Susan Kaplan in honor of her mother. While based in the Textile and Fashion Arts Department, the Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan Curator of Jewelry oversees objects of adornment Museum-wide.
Curent departmental activities include an extensive survey and photo-documentation project focusing on Asian textiles and costume. Funded in part by a grant from the Coby Foundation, the project will enhance accessibility for scholars and all visitors to this important and fascinating material.
The department is open to serious researchers by appointment. For more information, contact William DeGregorio (wdegregorio@mfa.org). The departmental library is an international study resource, which includes rich holdings ranging from rare books of the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries to contemporary fashion magazines. It is also open through advance appointment."
source: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, http://www.mfa.org/collections/index.asp?key=31
