American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity, is the first Costume Institute exhibition drawn exclusively from the newly established Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Met. It will explore developing perceptions of the modern American woman from 1890 to 1940, and how they have affected the way American women are seen today. Focusing on archetypes of American femininity through dress, the exhibition will reveal how the American woman initiated style revolutions that mirrored her social, political, and sexual emancipation. “Gibson Girls,” “Bohemians,” and “Screen Sirens” among others, helped lay the foundation for today’s American woman.
The exhibition will feature approximately 80 examples of haute couture and high fashion primarily from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was transferred to the Met from the Brooklyn Museum in January 2009. Many of the pieces have not been seen by the public in more than 30 years.
Visitors will walk through time as they enter circular galleries that reflect the milieu of each feminine archetype. Period clothing will be brought to life with hand-painted panoramas animated by music, video, and lighting. The first gallery will evoke the ballroom of the “Heiress” (1890s), filled with ball gowns by Charles Frederick Worth. Scenes of the great outdoors will showcase the athleticism and physical independence of the “Gibson Girl” (1890s) as characterized by bathing costumes, riding ensembles, and cycling suits.
An artistic rendering of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio in New York will provide the backdrop for the “Bohemian” (early 1900s), an archetype represented by Rita Lydig and featuring her signature silk pantaloons by Callot Soeurs. The “Suffragist” and “Patriot” (1910s) will have backdrops of archival film footage revealing the gradual political emancipation of women around the time of World War I.
“Flappers” (1920s) will be evoked through simple, practical chemise dresses for day by Patou, and heavily beaded styles for evening by Lanvin and Molyneux, which will be shown against a mural of New York City inspired by the paintings of Tamara de Lempicka. Cinematic representations of the “Screen Siren” will be presented in a gallery resembling a 1930s cinema, and will showcase body-cleaving, second-skin bias-cut gowns, including a dress designed by Travis Banton for Anna May Wong in the film Limehouse Blues (1934). In the final gallery, projected images of American women from 1890 to the present will explore how today’s ideal of American style evolved from characteristics represented by each of the exhibition’s archetypes.
Designers in the exhibition will include Travis Banton, Gabrielle Chanel, Callot Soeurs, Madame Eta, Elizabeth Hawes, Madame Grès, Charles James, Jeanne Lanvin, Liberty & Company, Edward Molyneux, Paul Poiret, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jessie Franklin Turner, Valentina, Madeleine Vionnet, Weeks, Charles Frederick Worth, and Jean-Philippe Worth, among others.
A concurrent exhibition of masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection will be presented at the Brooklyn Museum from May 7 through August 1, 2010. American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection will look at 19th- and 20th-century masterworks by designers including Madame Grès, Charles James, Claire McCardell, Norman Norell, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Charles Frederick Worth collected by prominent women including Lauren Bacall, Dominique de Menil, and Millicent Rogers. Many of these pieces have never previously been exhibited. This exhibition will be organized by Jan Glier Reeder, Consulting Curator of the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
