Fashion museum is hanging by a thread. Let’s not break it
We’re letting the natural and cultural treasures of Waterloo Region slip through our fingers too easily.
The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony is gone, in part, because political leaders, locally and federally, chose not to respond when the orchestra called for help. People who love hiking, cross-country skiing and birdwatching almost lost public access to the Schneider Lands, a beloved natural area in Wilmot Township. Luckily, Wilmot council agreed to drop its demand for a parking lot on the property, and access is not threatened.
Now, the newest endangered community asset is the Fashion History Museum in Cambridge. It will close for good very soon, unless the city decides to dramatically increase financial support.
“We committed to the city, and we’ll stay here if they commit to us. If they don’t commit to us, then we will have to close,” curatorial director Jonathan Walford said recently.
Walford and museum board chair Kenn Norman, both of whom cofounded the museum, are already using their own personal funds to cover some expenses. And the museum is also in $64,000 of rental arrears to the city, which owns the Hespeler building where it operates. Walford and Norman meet with city representatives on April 3 to try and work something out.
This 20-year-old museum is, in my opinion, the most important cultural institution in the entire city. Cambridge council should make sure it is on a solid financial footing. City leaders should stop charging any rent to the museum (as most cities do when they own a building occupied by a gallery or museum).
The city should also give the museum a robust operating grant, and let the museum know at least a year ahead of time what it can expect in support. They shouldn’t be deciding the amount of the 2024 grant in 2024. No non-profit organization can plan responsibly under those conditions.
Here’s why the fashion history museum is so important and why it’s worth it for Cambridge to sustain it:
Its achievements stand out Any city in Canada would be proud to host this organization. It has the largest costume and textile collection with exhibition space of any fashion history museum in Canada, outside Toronto and Montreal. Exhibitions created by this museum have travelled to faraway audiences like Hong Kong and Bahrain, even before there was a presence in Cambridge. “We were internationally known before we were local,” Norman said. The museum also has formidable archives for researchers, filmmakers and others, including the designer Christian Dior, rock ’n’ roll clothing, wedding dresses, and more.
It’s good for the city The Fashion History Museum welcomed 12,000 guests in 2023, of which 3,000 travelled more than 40 kilometres to get there. The impact of this tourism, on hotel stays, meals out and retail activity, has been estimated at $1 million. So it’s generating business for others.
Museum staff have also improved the city-owned building they’re in by adding features to enhance accessibility, plus fire prevention measures and air circulation improvements.
It enriches the lives of city residents It presents its citizens, especially young people, with a new avenue through which to experience wonder and happiness — two things in short supply since the pandemic. The museum also runs program for people with dementia, in which a representative visits with vintage clothing that was worn decades ago. That allows for beneficial reminiscence and recall.
Historically speaking, it’s the perfect fit for this city Woven into the history of Cambridge is its heritage of textile production with plants operating beside the Grand and Speed rivers.
In a book entitled “Hespeler: Portrait of an Ontario Town,” historian Ken McLaughlin detailed how the massive Dominion Woollens and Worsteds factory was the heart that made the town — and the Canadian effort in the Second World War — beat.
It was one of the largest woollen mills in the British Empire then, with up to 1,500 employees working three shifts a day, six days a week. The mill made khaki serge for soldiers’ uniforms, 19 km of it a week.
Hundreds of young women from Newfoundland came to work in those mills, which marked the beginning of the Newfoundland migration to Cambridge.
This is one reason that Cambridge is so aligned with textiles. There’s a permanent fibre art collection in the Cambridge Art Gallery. Individual art projects, like KNIT camBRIDGE, the 2010 wrapping of the Main Street Bridge in Galt with knitting, also reflect this heritage.
The City of Cambridge encouraged the museum to settle here. In 2020, the city bought the building that houses the museum, and dramatically raised the rent. It gave a grant to help cover the rent, but that grant decreased over time. Now, like the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony before it, the museum is facing a deficit, caught between the end of stable pandemic funding from the federal government, and trying to restart its operations in a new environment. It would be terrible for government to make the same mistake.
‘‘ We committed to the city, and we’ll stay here if they commit to us.
JONATHAN WALFORD FASHION HISTORY MUSEUM CURATORIAL DIRECTOR