The GW University Museum and the Textile Museum

Located in the heart of Washington, D.C., the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum celebrates the creative achievements of local and global cultures from antiquity through today. The museum unites The Textile Museum, established in 1925, and the Albert H. Small Center for National Capital Area Studies to engage the university and the wider community through collections, scholarship, exhibitions, and educational programs.

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What do these three Textile Museum collections pieces—a nineteenth-century Chinese hanging, late-Incan neckplate, and fifteenth-century Peruvian tabard—have in common? They were all made with feathers! Click the “information” icon at the top-right of each image to learn more about the feathers and techniques used for each.

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It takes a team of conservators and hours of meticulous preparation and care to get a textile ready for display in the museum. Peek inside our lab at the Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center to see how we prepared two objects from The Textile Museum collections that are now on view in the galleries. In the images at the top, Conservation Fellow Gennifer Majors and Rebecca Summerour, a contract conservator, humidify a twentieth-century Japanese kimono with cold water vapor to reduce creasing, and prepare hardware for hanging the kimono on a t-stand. Below, Rebecca carefully removes an iron-on patch that was attached to an Iranian prayer cloth before the museum acquired it. 

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In the second phase of our photography project, photographer Neil Greentree and his assistant Bret Littlehales captured high-resolution images of objects from The Textile Museum collections using a customized boom that could be easily maneuvered to get both overview and detail shots. This pilot project was made possible through the Charles Rumph Photography Fund.

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The museum recently completed a seven-month photography pilot project, based at our Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center and made possible through the Charles Rumph Photography Fund. As part of this venture, collections management staff worked with two local professional photographers to get high-resolution images of select objects from The Textile Museum collections. Photographer Renée Comet led the first round, using the catwalk in our photography studio to get detailed overhead views. Stay tuned for images of our second photographer in action!

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Visitors enjoyed a rare peek inside the museum’s Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center on a recent tour organized by the New Horizons Committee, a volunteer group dedicated to expanding the community of museum members and supporters. Collections management and conservation staff led the group around the facilities—including collections storage and processing rooms, the conservation lab, and a workroom dedicated to research and photography projects—and shared insights on their work. 

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One of the most enjoyable parts about this time of year is witnessing all of the beautiful flowers come to life. The museum houses a number of pieces with floral designs including rugs, shirts, scarves, and even belts. Inspired by Washington, D.C.’s budding blooms, our Collections Management intern, Meghan, has selected some of her favorite flowery pieces from the collection to share.  The top picture shows an embroidered bedspread fragment from 17th century Greece. The women holding flowers in their hands are wearing Ottoman style long robes and surrounded by vases, flowers, and parrot-like birds. The middle image shows a contemporary Peruvian woman’s belt. This type of belt is very commonly worn in Chivay, where it was made.  The bottom object is an Indian wall hanging with embroidered vases and flowers under a lobed arch. Imagery on the hanging eludes to the fecundity of the nature. 

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This fall, the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum will open two new exhibitions that showcase textiles from its collections: China: Through the Lens of John Thomson (1868-1872) (opening September 19) and Old Patterns, New Order: Socialist Realism in Central Asia (opening October 10).

These photos give you a sneak-peek inside our conservation lab, where conservators have been hard at work preparing mounts to display the textiles chosen by the curators. These mounts are carefully crafted to both aesthetically compliment the objects and to safely account for their fragility and condition needs.

From top to bottom:

When not on display, many textiles are stored in special mats; their standard size facilitates their transfer between the storage space and conservation lab. Once in the lab, their design allows for an easy move onto the display mounts. Textile fragment with cicadas and flowers of the four seasons, China, 19th century. The Textile Museum 1992.18.2; Gift of Dr. Edmund Bowles in memory of Lois W. and Edward L. Bowles.

Each mount is custom-fit to the object and is covered by hand with layers of archival padding and exhibition fabric. Here, Conservator Lisa Anderson uses threads to square the perimeter and help center the textile on the mount. The threads will be removed once the object is secured. 

This silk embroidered sleeve for the China exhibition is laid down and carefully sewn to its display mount using fine silk thread. Very thin insect pins help keep the embroidery in place during the sewing process. Sleeve band, China, 19th century. The Textile Museum 1965.65.3a.

Conservation intern Diana Van Wagner is putting the final touches on a hat mount for Old Patterns; this foam insert will be invisible to the viewer but will play a major role insuring that the hat will hold its shape and be well supported for all the time it is on display. 

At any given time, the conservation staff is working on various projects. In the foreground Chief Conservator Esther Méthé is verifying the final placement of a scarf for Old Patterns, while in the background Lisa is working on the underpinning she sewed to add volume to a coat slotted for display in the same exhibition. Woman’s scarf, Uzbekistan, late 19th to early 20th century. The Textile Museum 1995.8.1. Gift of Mr. Laron Larian, Tel Aviv.

Photos by Zachary Marin / The George Washington University.

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With the museum's grand opening just days away, conservators, curators, registrars, and exhibition preparators are putting the finishing touches on three inaugural exhibitions. Peek behind the scenes to see how staff are mounting the largest exhibition in The Textile Museum’s history—from planning and conservation through installation. 

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Pint-sized prototypes of the galleries are critical to the curators' planning process.

From left to right: Exhibition Production Assistant Preparator Scott Brouard, Exhibition Production ManagerDoug Anderson, Exhibition Coordinator Monika Hirschbichler,Chief Conservator Esther Méthé, Associate Conservator Maria Fusco, and Exhibition Production Technician Frank Petty.

Conservator Lisa Anderson inspects a carpet that will be on display. Carpet (detail), Turkey, Uşak, 18th century. The Textile MuseumR34.22.1. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1925. 

Members of the exhibition production team mount the carpet on a custom-cut board covered with exhibition fabric, which now hangs on a specially constructed frame in the third-floor gallery.

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Rolled textiles comprise approximately one third of The Textile Museum’s collections in storage, so it is no surprise that our staff are so excited for an amazing upgrade to the way the museum cares for these important pieces. 

At the conservation and collections resource center, rolled textiles can now be stored suspended on rods within adjustable bottomless drawers inside of cabinets. This method of storage has many advantages:

By suspending the rolls on rods rather than resting them on a surface, we reduce the amount of stress on these fragile pieces.

The drawers can be adjusted for any spacing, so both thicker and thinner rolls can easily find a home. The flexibility of these cabinets helps us efficiently use the cabinet space.

The depth of the drawers (32 inches) allows up to 8 rolls to be suspended per drawer.

The height of the cabinets (9 feet) maximizes vertical space.

In these photos, Registrar Rachel Shabica and Associate Registrar Tessa Lummis adjust the spacing of a rolled textile storage cabinet—from its factory setting to a new configuration that is more conducive to fitting a variety of roll circumferences. 

Shabica and Lummis unscrew all of the drawers from the gliders that let them slide in and out of the cabinet, and then unscrew the gliders from the cabinet walls. Next, the registrars remove the gliders from the walls and reset them in an even spacing, utilizing the full height of the cabinet. Finally, they replace the drawers onto the moveable portion of the gliders and screw them back in place.  

Configuring cabinets is a lot of hard work, but we could not be happier to have this upgraded storage system!

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Just in time for the Washington, D.C. area's first cold snap of 2015, museum staff have turned on the walk-through freezer at the conservation and collections resource center for an inaugural object freezing!

Here Chief Conservator Esther Méthé and Associate Registrar Tessa Lummis wheel in sixty-three objects that are part of a travelling exhibition, and therefore were not frozen as part of the collections move.

Freezing textiles at a temperature of -30 degrees Celsius or below is an important element of the museum’s integrated pest management protocol. After a week of freezing, these objects will be brought to room temperature before they are unwrapped, inspected, and put away in storage.

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Staff from across the museum recently gave registrars and conservators a hand with the next phase of the collections move—unpacking The Textile Museum’s 19,988 pieces and storing them in their new home.

From left to right:

Associate Conservator Maria Fusco (left) and Exhibition Coordinator Monika Hirschbichler (right) wrap archival boxes containing museum objects in polyethylene to prepare them for freezing in our new walk-through freezer!

Curator Lee Talbot unpacks rolled textiles that have already been frozen. Talbot is unsealing them and trimming the tubular polyethylene so that the rolls can be threaded onto rods and placed in new custom-built cabinets. 

Museum Director John Wetenhall helps Registrar Rachel Shabica configure these storage cabinets, which were specifically designed to house The Textile Museum's collections of rolled objects.  

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The Textile Museum has received three grants to support critical equipment needed to conserve textiles and mount exhibitions at its new facilities.

The Stockman Family Foundation Trust enabled the museum to purchase a conservation wash table (top) and suction system, used by conservators to gently clean collections pieces. Thanks to an in-kind donation from DeWalt, the museum received a shipment of power tools (bottom) that are essential in constructing exhibitions. Additionally, the Prince Charitable Trusts awarded funding through its capital grants program that allowed the museum to purchase bench and hand tools for its exhibition fabrication workshop.

Together these grants will increase staff efficiency and further best practices in collections care and exhibition fabrication.

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The Collections Move Is Complete!

On November 11, museum staff oversaw the final delivery of The Textile Museum's 19,988 collections pieces to the new conservation and collections resource center in Ashburn, Va. This monumental initiative began in January 2012 with a comprehensive survey of the collections. The effort continues as staff carefully unpack and place objects in new storage shelves and cabinets.

Congratulations to our dedicated staff and volunteers on this extraordinary achievement!

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Meet Lori Kartchner!

The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum welcomes Lori Kartchner, who joined our staff on September 29 as assistant curator of education. Previously a contract educator for the museum's partnership with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, Lori has also volunteered her time since September 2013 on the museum's new Textile Learning Center project. Lori received her MAT from GW's Museum Education Program in 2013 and her BA in Humanities: Art History from Brigham Young University in 2010. 

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Our exhibition production team is breaking in the workshop at our new conservation and collections resource center! New workshop tools were purchased through a generous grant from the Prince Charitable Trusts.

Here, Exhibition Production Manager Doug Anderson cuts boards that will be used to mount flat textiles in Unraveling Identity: Our Textiles, Our Stories, opening this March. 

The team's next project will be to construct furnishings for the two opening Washingtoniana exhibitions: including acrylic stands for photo displays, and bases to support the climate-controlled cases that will house fragile historic documents.

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It really takes a team effort to safely pack some of the largest and most fragile objects in The Textile Museum’s collections. The Paracas mantle is one of these special pieces. Due to its delicate nature, it needed to travel flat (without being folded or rolled), which posed challenges for moving it through tight doorways.

Ely, Inc. art handler Chris Kirages addressed these challenges by creating a special crate which uses foam padding and gentle compression to protect the piece and prevent it from shifting, while allowing the crate to tilt through doorways when needed. 

In the photos above, you can see art handlers and the museum's conservation and collections staff removing the piece from an over-sized storage drawer and placing it on padding inside the crate. Art handlers removed the board by slowly pulling it away as others gently held the mantle in place. Once the piece was off of its storage board and inside the crate, it was covered in soft tissue sheets, and another board was placed on top. The crate was sealed by screwing slats across the top, thus creating the gentle compression that kept this Peruvian treasure safe in transit.

Mantle, Peru, South Coast, Paracas style, ca. 600 BCE. Camelid fiber, 85 x 47 in. TM 91.192. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1940.

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Ely, Inc. art handler Chris Kirages recently packed The Textile Museum's small collection of ceramics for safe transit to the museum's new conservation and collections resource center. 

First, Kirages used archival blue board, Ethafoam, and Volara to create individual mounts for each ceramic piece that will both protect these pieces during travel and permanently stabilize them in collections storage. 

Next, he lined a large bin box with cushioning and foam bumpers. The ceramic mounts were placed between the bumpers in a single layer, with additional cushioning between and on top. The foam bumpers allowed Kirages to safely create multiple layers of ceramics in a single large box.