Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 46

and soon there came to be a legion of skilled seamstresses
crafting dresses out of gorgeous fabrics at home."
To deepen her understanding of the period, Crow contacted history professor Christopher Clark, who turned out to
be a valuable resource on small-town industrial New England.
He became a consultant to the exhibit, and together they crafted
a story about the garments in the exhibit. Clark also wrote an
introduction to the exhibition as well as the foreword for the
accompanying catalog.
With a gallery space procured and a theme decided upon,
Crow's next step was to enlist the help of students, volunteers, and
costuming colleagues to get started with the huge task of conserving and mounting the garments to be exhibited. And she really had to scramble because Bruhn had just informed everyone
that because of scheduling conflicts at the museum, the Women
of New England exhibit opening needed to be moved up from
March to January 2012. Despite the shortened time
frame, Crow was able to find a dedicated team of
assistants and several colleagues who generously
shared their expertise with her.

SELECTING THE GARMENTS
Crow began the garment selection process by pulling
out and setting aside garments constructed between
1850-1900 that were in good
physical condition. Drawing on
her costume history expertise
and referencing extant photographs
and other primary source materials
from the period, Crow confirmed
the dates listed on each garment's
catalog tag, updating the tags as
needed. She discovered that the
garments themselves also served
as valuable visual research tools.
"When one hundred extant
dresses are placed side by side
chronologically, it becomes
obvious how a specific detail
Dress display in front the gallery
entrance at the Benton Museum of Art.

Edward drew my attention to
the fact that many of the cotton
housedresses in the collection were
extremely rare even though they
were not necessarily show stoppers.
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or construction element fits within that time frame," she said.
Crow also sought the advice of Edward Maeder, an independent
costume and textile consultant who was previously curator of
costumes and textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
and was founding director of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
Maeder was able to assign dates to many of the specialty items
in the collection, such as antique laces, trims, and shoes.
Deciding on which garments should ultimately be included in the exhibit was a challenge. The original goal
was to limit the exhibit to thirty garments, but that number
slowly crept up to fifty as it became increasingly difficult
to cut items from the show. Crow says, "I asked Edward
if he would come and advise us as to which pieces he felt
were unique to the area and which items he felt were being
shown less in other museums. He drew my attention to the
fact that many of the cotton housedresses in the collection
were extremely rare even though they were not necessarily
show stoppers." In the end, the exhibit included wedding
gowns, day dresses, evening gowns, children's clothing,
housedresses, underpinnings, and children's dolls.

CONSERVATION CONCERNS
Handling and mounting antique garments onto mannequins
for exhibitions is inherently risky. Crow maintains that it is important for anyone seeking to display historic dress to weigh
the pros and cons of handling the aged textiles based on the
individual circumstances of the exhibit and of the costumes being mounted. For the Women of New England exhibit, she felt
the Historical Clothing and Textile Collection's mission to share
these garments and their histories with students and the public
outweighed the disadvantages of mounting these garments in
less than perfect conditions.
Crow did, however, try to select only garments that would
not be permanently damaged by handling them and displaying
them for a limited time. "I decided that we had to do what we
could to make them available for display, otherwise people would
never get to see them." So the team working on the exhibit did
the best they could to protect the integrity of each garment using
the resources and knowledge available to them. Crow adds that
the costumes from the exhibit are in much better condition now
and that their storage situation has improved as well.

PREPARING THE GARMENTS
After carefully selecting the garments for the exhibit, the real
work began. Most of the dresses selected for display were
dusty and wrinkled, and some were torn and stained. Of
course it was not possible to wash or dry-clean these garments since the majority of them were too delicate. It was
possible, however, to freshen them up, sometimes dramatically, by vacuuming the dust from them. Crow placed a finemesh screen on top of each garment, to prevent the fabric
from getting pulled into the wand of the vacuum cleaner and
then carefully cleaned the outside of the garment in sections
until the majority of the dust was removed.

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