Fashion proves to be a hit for museums in Pittsburgh
Coveted designs by the likes of McQueen and Prada have long been at home on the racks of high-end retailers, the runways of global fashion weeks or the red carpet.
Thesedays, though, they’re also keeping the Monets and Picassos company in museum galleries — and not just the ones known for puttingfashion on display.
As museums of all sorts seek ways to engage longtime visitors and attract new ones, fashion-focused exhibitions are proving they have the potential to do both.
Take The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze, for instance, where “Undressed: A History of Fashion in Underwear” has been on view since October. It’s averaged about 2,500 visitors a week in its final days, says executive director Robin Nicholson. Due to popular demand, its stay was extended by a week and ends Sunday.
So far, its attendance has been “neck and neck” with “Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe,” which brought in more than 24,000 visitors during its
three-month engagement in 2016 — the highest attendance to a show presented by The Frick Pittsburgh in a decade. For about 10,000 of them, it was their first visit to the museum.
Fashion exhibitions have been a hit at other local institutions, too. The August Wilson Center for African-American Culture welcomed “Costumes of The Wiz Live!” by Fashion-AFRICANA in 2016. “Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion,” the first major fashion exhibition for the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland, saw nearly 70,000 visitors in almost three months last year.
The museum as a whole saw an 18 percent increase in attendance during the show, when compared with the average visitorship for the same time period for the past three years. In particular, attendance among 18-to 34-year-olds doubled over the months immediately prior to the show.
Fashion also struck a chord with visitors at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side, where “Halston and Warhol: Silver and Suede” chronicled the overlap of these two creatives’ personal and professional lives in 2014. It reported a 9 percent increase in visits during the exhibition compared to the same time the previous year.
Meanwhile, in New York City, The Museum of Modern Art is holding its first fashion exhibition since the 1940s. “ITEMS: Is Fashion Modern?” showcases 111 pieces — from hoodies and hijabs to ballet flats and backpacks — that have shaped style and society in the 20th and 21st centuries. It runs through Jan. 28.
“The reception of the exhibition has been everything we hoped for, and more,” says Paola Antonelli, senior curator for the department of architecture and design, as well as the director of research and development, for The MoMA. “‘ITEMS’ has allowed us to have new conversations in our galleries and to argue that without recourse to fashion we are unable to really offer a truly holistic, rich and nuanced history of design.”
So what is it about fashion that’s made it such a hit lately in museums?
“Our visitors are drawn to fashion in part because it feels relatable. We all engage with fashion daily, in a very personal way,” says Jessica Regan, assistant curator for The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Its spring fashion exhibitions have been blockbusters for the museum, routinely shattering attendance records. In 2015, it brought back a fall fashion exhibition following a seven-year hiatus.
For spring, it will present “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” an exploration of the interplay between fashion and religious art.
The celebrity appeal of fashion helps get patrons in the door, as well, Mr. Nicholson says.
“It’s very glamorous, and it’s got star power. The designers all have their own incredible stories of success and tragedy. A museum is really the sort of place that’s good at telling those stories and interpreting them in a meaningful way.”
But that hasn’t always been considered the case. For decades, fashion was viewed as too pedestrian to be put upon a pedestal in a museum. Plus, it’s resource-intensive to display properly on mannequins and store in between shows.
In contemporary times, however, clothing has moved beyond pure utilitarian purposes, and people want to see up close the designer garments they’ve gushed over in a magazine or on television.
“As museums take popular interest into the equation, fashion is a no brainer,” says Rachel Delphia, the Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman curator of decorative arts and design for the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Not all fashion exhibitions, though, are a guaranteed success. The most compelling ones seem to approach sartorial storytelling in creative ways, museum professionals say. For the Carnegie Museum of Art, that meant complementing Dutch designer Iris van Herpen’s haute couture creations and futuristic aesthetic with a range of programming, including a fashion show with Pittsburgh-based designers and an experiential tour with touchable materials for visually impaired visitors.
“We wanted people to take away an appreciation for the ways that art and technology can complement each other,” Ms. Delphia says. “It was almost impossible to walk through with somebody and not have them connect with something, like a ‘wow’ moment.”
Similarly, curators at The Met have found that often times the more immersive an exhibition is, the better.
“Andrew Bolton’s ‘Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty’ exhibition of 2011 was a turning point for this. Videos, holograms and the soundtrack elevated the show beyond a simple presentation of great designs and helped visitors appreciate the artistry and emotional power of McQueen’s work,” Ms. Regan says.
At MoMA, part of the popularity of “ITEMS” has been getting the public’s take on the list of 111 pieces featured in the exhibition.
“They have pointed out what we have missed and what they think we should have added in,” Ms. Antonelli says. “We just asked via social media what the 112th item should be.”
Now that attitudes toward fashion in museums have shifted, don’t think it’s just a fad. The Frick Pittsburgh hopes to make it a yearly exhibition and is working on planning-shows through 2021 for now. Other local institutions also are keeping their options open, as is the museum-world at large.
“Fashion has just the same role to play in museums as any other form of design — helping visitors see the world around them with more clarity and urgency and wonder,” Ms. Antonelli says. “I hope it becomes ever-more integrated into the conversations that museums engender between visual history and diverse publics.”