I Do: The Marriage of Fashion and Art. Indianapolis Museum of Art. June 11, 2006-February 25, 2007.
Reviewed by Carrie Hertz
Unveiled
during the height of the Midwestern United States’ wedding season, the
Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) recently ended its beautiful
exhibition of “nuptial attire,” I Do: The Marriage of Fashion and Art. Inaugurating the newly renovated and expanded Paul Fashion and Textile Arts galleries, I Do
displayed nearly 50 items of adornment from the United States, England,
China, Japan, Indonesia, India, Iran, and Africa. The installation,
divided between two galleries, clearly separated Western and
non-Western dress to stunning visual effect; American and English
gowns, like white and pastel pieces of cake, appeared luminous against
pale pink walls, while the gallery of non-Western garments, in
comparison, offered a brilliant array of vivid color and form. The
separation, a standard art historical approach, though aesthetically
revealing also anticipates the different standards applied to the
constructed categories.
In
the Western gallery, full-form mannequins sculpted the gowns into
three-dimensional shape. Labels provided information about the designer
and the item’s ability to represent particular moments in fashion
history or the cultural milieu. The label for an 1875 English gown with
silk orange blossoms trimming the sleeves and bodice, for example,
reveals that the flowers, a “Chinese symbol of fertility,” indicate the
West’s growing interest in Eastern design during the 19th century.
Accompanying a number of the minimal labels were additional
contextualizing materials such as photographs of the owner wearing the
displayed gown in her wedding portrait or reproduced pages from fashion
magazines recommending similar dress styles. A 1975 gown donated by G.
Vance Smith included a reproduced, handwritten letter from the donor
explaining the provenance of the garment and its continued use as an
“evening gown” by removing the more formal train. An Indianapolis
society newspaper clipping, another interesting inclusion, provided a
contemporary description of the gown and wedding of socialite Caroline
Ella Buford Danner that commenced at the Buford Mansion in
Indianapolis. These materials lead the viewer beyond a simple
appreciation of form by infusing the garments with a sense of
individual choice and creative innovation. A casual scan of the gallery
showed a diverse group of dresses chronologically arranged and
connected to individual, named, and often pictured women whose
informed, stylistic choices are celebrated. The wedding portraits and
descriptions placed the gowns within a larger context of the material
culture of a recognizable marriage ceremony by revealing the assemblage
of adornment (such as hair, makeup, and accessories) and ritual
accoutrements.
Entering
the gallery of non-Western items, the format of the display changed.
While every garment in the adjoining installation space was showcased
to maximum advantage on full-form mannequins with paper-cut hair
consistent with the era of the dress, non-Western pieces appeared on
partial or two-dimensional mannequins, hung flat against walls, and
framed. The formal beauty of a 19th-century silk Punjabi wedding veil
may be best observed on a single plane. However, as an exhibit of
ritual apparel, many of the display techniques for this portion of the
installation masked how the items were worn on the body or fit into
larger ensembles. The few ethnographic photographs affixed to the walls
presented a normative picture of nameless – and occasionally faceless –
people. Understandably, the legacy of ethnographic materials in art
history collections lack contextualizing information about makers,
wearers, or cultural milieu. Such a legacy can pose substantial
obstacles for the curators who inherit it. The stark contrast, however,
between the active choices of G. Vance Smith celebrated in the
adjoining gallery and the “traditional” expressions of the “Chodor
people” of Turkmenistan, for example, present an imbalanced and
inappropriate comparison. More confusing is the inconsistent definition
of “wedding apparel.”
I Do
does not include a main label, but print material distributed with the
IMA visitor map explains that the exhibit “celebrates the international
traditions of the marriage rite as seen in stunning wedding gowns and
other nuptial attire.” While the Western-centered gallery presents only
ritual garments (the Western wedding gown), the non-Western
installation includes “trousseau” items and clothing that simply
indicates the wearer has reached marriageable age such as an
exquisitely red and black “beaded bodice” from Sudan (Dinka people)
that, according to the label, is actually removed at the time of
marriage. Textiles identified as the mid-19th century creations of the
Shahrisabz people of Uzbekistan are not garments at all but “hangings,
bridal bed covers, or room dividers” that constitute part of a woman’s
dowry. These inclusions, while lavishly and skillfully
decorated—certainly worthy of display—only enhance the feeling of
incommensurability between the two galleries. Conceptualizations of
marriage and wedding ceremonies are not universal and I Do
would have benefited from either more careful object selections or more
explanatory text. By neglecting the social and cultural perspectives
that enliven the non-Western items of I Do,
the exhibit not only rejects the very parameters set by its stated
objectives, it does a disservice to a collection of fantastically
beautiful objects.
Carrie
Hertz is a doctoral student in the Department of Folklore and
Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Her work focuses on museum and
material culture studies, with a special emphasis on the study of
clothing and self-adornment. In fall 2007 she will begin work as
Editorial Assistant for Museum Anthropology.