Textile Resource Center: On Generosity & Growth of the Collection

Authors

Danielle Lasker, School of the Art Institute of ChicagoFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Library & Special Collections department is home to the Textile Resource Center--a haptic collection of over 500 textile objects and some 2,000 books related to various textile topics. Objects range from contemporary production up to 500-600 years old and origins all around the world. The texts range across topics such as weaving, individual artists, lace making, exhibition catalogs, crochet, critical theory, and more. The TRC primarily serves the department of Fiber & Material Studies where the collection is physically housed, but also attracts visitors from across SAIC and beyond. Prior to onboarding of the inaugural Joan Livingstone Director Danielle Lasker in July 2023, the collection had spent its first ten years being staffed by two part time graduate student Research Assistants led by a faculty advisor. This limited the amount of time in which visitors could utilize the collection, but since opening with more than double the previously available open hours last fall semester, the TRC has seen dozens of class visits and hundreds of individual and small group visitors. Providing visitors with the opportunity to have hands-on interactions with objects they may have only previously seen in museum exhibitions or in the printed pages of books, the TRC offers research opportunities which cater distinctly well to fiber and material based artists. This presentation seeks to present the TRC as a case study of generosity and growth within a truly unique textile collection.