World of Wearable Art hits US East Coast
It’s been a party in the United States for New Zealand’s World of Wearable Art over the weekend, as the travelling exhibition moved to the East Coast.
WOW’s touring exhibition has been on the road since November 2014, and its latest North American stop is Salem, Massachusetts, north of Boston on the East Coast.
The exhibition left Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), where it had been for six months, and opened at Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum over the weekend.
WOW Chief Executive Gisella Carr, who went to Salem for the opening celebrations, said the exhibition’s success in United States has been hugely gratifying for the whole team.
‘‘We are really delighted by the way American museums and their audiences are responding in the same way – it is really catching fire over there,’’ Carr said.
‘‘The New Zealand competition attracts outstanding wearable art designers from across world.
‘‘This exhibition showcases their work internationally at a level of quality and craftsmanship that is eye-opening for audiences.’’
More than 40,000 people visit the National WOW Museum in Nelson each year to see winning designs from the annual WOW competition, held in Wellington during September and October.
A curator at Seattle’s MoPOP Bonnie Showers said wearable art is a new concept for audiences and was a drawcard for museum visitors.
‘‘We had record numbers at MoPOP and a huge heartwarming response to WOW here.
‘‘Even our hardcore science fiction fans have delighted in the pure, over-the-top imagination and extraordinary artistry represented through the WOW exhibit,’’ she said.
The travelling WOW exhibition features 32 garments, including a 17th Century wooden ball gown made by an Alaskan carpenter, a New Zealand-made goddess in a suit of armour created by a blacksmith, and an ethereal skeleton by a Chinese design student.
Also in the exhibition is a display of ‘‘bizarre’’ bras made of unconventional materials including kitchen utensils, a taxidermied hedgehog, and ‘‘aBRAcaplyse Now’’, which heralds the Mayan end of days and the civilization’s ancestral iguana God.
Both a VIP function and official opening were held for the WOW exhibition at its new home at the Peabody Essex Museum over the weekend.
Included in the line up of guests were New York-based designers and former WOW winners Mio Guberinic and Alexa Cach.
Guberinic worked on garments for Madonna’s 2015 world tour and he and Cach made a presentation at the public opening of the exhibition.
Spokesperson for WOW Emma Thompson said the weekend had been a huge success.
The WOW exhibits will be on display at the Peabody Essex Museum until June 11.