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The Textile Museum is a vibrant and robust museum. We are engaged in many projects
here. We take care of our collection, 18,000 pieces. Think about that. From 3000 B.C. to
the current time. Precious and fragile and wonderful...and we look to house them and
take care of them.
As director of the Textile Museum, I oversee all of the departments and work with the staff
to ensure that all of future exhibitions and our programs are really meeting the mission
of the museum. I also work with the Board of Trustees and additional staff to oversee
our development program, make sure it's active and robust, and ensure the fiscal responsibility
of the museum.
The Textile Museum's mission is to expand the public knowledge of the artistic merit
and the cultural importance of the world's textiles, both to our local, national and
international audience.
We have many audiences. Of course our core audience are textile enthusiasts. We have
a wider audience which is the general public, who we are trying to engage so they can understand
and value textiles as art just as we do here.
Textiles are a universal source of commonality. They effect all cultures, all peoples. So
it is our job here to engage the public to understand their importance, their beauty
and cultural importance.
We are housed in two beautiful historic homes, about a 100 years old, here on Embassy Row.
It is a gorgeous location and it is really to our advantage because in our collection
we speak to many cultures. We work from Central Asia, to Japan, we have Western Hemisphere,
we have African textiles. We have textiles from around the world. And we are, in this
location, surrounded by the Embassy's of the world.
So we often reach out to them and work with them because we are of the same mission. To
raise awareness of... cultural awareness, and so we work with them and our collections in
the museum to create events that we may partner in, that we can engage the public, speak to
them about their culture maybe through out textile collections.
Textiles have a place everywhere in the world. They touch every aspect of our lives. They
give a history of a culture. As we look back through many many years, through thousand
and thousands of years, often we reconstruct that history through textiles. Textiles are
used in many cultures...have been used a currency, they determine status, they are used to elevate
an event, it might be a marriage, it could be the textiles determines their status in
society, just as these Ikats did. The bulkier the Ikat the large that person was perceived
at through maybe wearing multiple jackets. That gave them a certain status in their culture.
So textiles have a place throughout every aspect of our culture and our everyday life.