Abstract
Despite a polemical start, the idea and practice of fashion exhibitions gained significant traction to the point where these types of shows draw in greater attendance numbers than many more conventional museum shows or fashion ephemera and artifacts have become must haves for many art exhibitions, for example, in the February to July 2024 Sargent and Fashion exhibition held at the Tate Britain in London, which featured fashionable garments and objects that the painter included in portraits of his well-heeled clientele or similar garments and objects to the ones represented. This shift in the museum’s practice to treat fashion in a similar manner to fine art, as opposed to an applied one, can also be understood by considering where western museums and art galleries found themselves at the turn of the twentieth century and how the field of fashion does in fact support the colonial enterprise of these ideological institutions.
Presenters
Nigel LezamaAssociate Professor, The School of Fashion, Toronto Metropolitan University, Ontario, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—The Future of Museum Narratives
KEYWORDS
Fashion Curation, Neoliberalisation of Culture, Museums and Coloniality
