Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen

September 16, 2022–January 1, 2023

Curated by Emma Cormack (MA ’18), associate curator, Bard Graduate Center; Ilona Kos, curator, Textilmuseum St. Gallen; and Michele Majer, professor emerita, Bard Graduate Center.

Generous support for Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen was provided by the Coby Foundation with additional support from the Zurich Silk Association, Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, Consulate General of Switzerland in New York, Switzerland Tourism, Forster Rohner AG, Tobias Forster, AKRIS, and other donors to Bard Graduate Center.

This project was supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov.

In fall 2022, Bard Graduate Center Gallery opened one of the most successful exhibitions in its history—Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen. The exhibition took on two contrasting perspectives: lace as an exalted handmade commodity that signified the wealth, taste, and prestige of those who wore it and lacemaking as an industry built on the labor of highly skilled but poorly paid women whose names are no longer known to us. Curators Emma Cormack (MA ’18), Ilona Kos, and Michele Majer bridged these two concurring realities through the display of over 150 examples of the world’s finest handmade needle and bobbin lace from the collection of Switzerland’s Textilmuseum St. Gallen alongside contemporary examples of lace, digital interactives, a collaboration with the Brooklyn Lace Guild, and an award-winning catalogue.

The exhibition was organized to trace the development of lace from its emergence in the late sixteenth century to the present. Its themes included early lace, ecclesiastical lace (Hapsburg Spain, and Bourbon France, 1600–1800), the mechanization of lace, revival styles, the invention of “chemical” lace, and finally, contemporary innovations in lace manufacturing and couture.

The first floor of the exhibition opened with a lace collar and portrait commissioned by lacemaker Elena Kanagy-Loux, a celebrated member of the contemporary lacemaking community. Her piece, made of red silk, was inspired by examples of antique lace that illustrate the Old Testament story of Judith beheading Holofernes.

The second and third floors of the gallery space highlighted lace in early modern Europe, ecclesiastical lace, Spanish and French lace, and the mechanization of lace production leading to postwar fashion and chemical lace. As visitors toured the exhibition, they could access the Tracing Lace Story Tour on their phones. Commissioned by BGC’s department of Public Humanities + Research and created by artists Janani Balasubramanian and James Harrison Monaco, the story tour included original musical compositions and a scientific narrative background.

Bard Graduate Center students served as gallery educators on weekly tours of the exhibition. In addition, a verbal description tour titled “Lace Speaks!” was offered for visitors with low or impaired vision.

On the weekends, the fourth floor of the gallery was activated by the lacemakers of the Brooklyn Lace Guild. A rotating cast of seventeen members of the guild shared their expertise in the craft with visitors of the gallery. The open studio format became a reason for visitors to return, engaging audiences of all ages. The fourth floor was also home to an interactive micro-exhibition, a kìí sèsó gbélé (we do not dress up beautifully to sit at home), curated by BGC graduate mary adeogun (MA ’22). adeogun produced a podcast of the same name, both of which explored lace in Nigerian history and culture.

Although the exhibition has closed, the Threads of Power experience has continued impact through its online counterpart, created by Cormack and director of Digital Humanities / Digital Exhibitions Jesse Merandy. The website hosts high-resolution images of many objects featured in the exhibition along with interpretive text written by the curators, as well as the story tour and the podcast.

These various facets of the exhibition illustrated the world of lace to experts in the field and curious visitors alike. Threads of Power received praise from press including Laura Jacobs from the Wall Street Journal who wrote “Handmade lace has been called ‘white gold,’ and the BGC exhibition . . . shows us why.” Apollo magazine’s Eve Kahn concurred, writing that it “dazzlingly conveys not only how wearers of lace climbed social ladders, but also how they financed the careers of the women who stitched it with bleary eyes.” Roberta Smith of the New York Times noted that Threads of Power “gives New York its first in-depth look in nearly forty years at the history of this intricate, fragile, and costly textile.”