Curating Fashion Exhibitions
Curated fashion exhibitions are fabricated sites where research practice, creative design, material culture, histories, and aesthetics converge in public display. In this course, students will learn about curatorial practice broadly, and the display of fashion artifacts more specifically, through theory and practice. We explore curation as research practice, while considering conceptual, political, economic, and aesthetic aspects of display. Research methods, archival research, analysis of primary sources, oral histories, and other forms of information gathering will be discussed and explored. In addition to individual assignments and readings, students will work collaboratively throughout the semester to curate a fashion exhibition using the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection along with other archives and collections across campus.
Topics
- Students will learn to conduct original research for curated exhibitions (e.g., historical method, archival research, object-based research, material culture analysis, oral histories, and visitor surveys) and develop primary source literacy.
- Students will learn to work collaboratively to research, curate, install, and promote a public fashion exhibition.
- Students will learn to think critically about fashion exhibitions and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in terms of content, quality of research, argument, aesthetics, and material display (e.g., conservation and preservation concerns).
- Students will learn about management of museum, archive, and teaching/study collections and how to enhance diversity, inclusion, and social justice initiatives in these spaces.
- Students will learn about the historical development of fashion exhibitions, current and past debates about curation and display in the field of fashion studies, and differing approaches to exhibition research, design, and installation across time and cultural contexts.
Official roster learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027