September
Changing Hats: French Millinery in Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade
With Laura Camerlengo, Assistant Curator of Costume and Textile Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Saturday, September 16, 2017, 10 a.m. Koret Auditorium, de Young Museum
Admission: Free for current members of the TAC; $5 for students and members of FAMSF; $10 General Admission
At their most fundamental, hats cover and protect us, providing shelter from the elements and safety from unwanted advances. But hats also serve as forms of creative and artistic expression, as exemplified by French-made women’s millinery from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As explored in the Museums’ special exhibition, Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade, the period from 1875 to 1914 marks the height of the millinery trade in France, and especially in Paris, as reflected in the work of Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) and the Impressionists as well as in extant hats and bonnets from this period.
Presented as a complement to this exhibition, “Changing Hats: French Millinery in Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade” will provide a chronology of women’s millinery, by the exploration of the stylistic changes in women’s bonnets and hats during this almost forty year period. Rather than a comprehensive survey, the presentation will focus on the millinery designs featured in the Degas exhibition, with particular emphasis on women’s hats and bonnets from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s costume collection. Further context will be provided by contemporary fashion plates, paintings, portraits, and photographs.
Laura L. Camerlengo is the Assistant Curator of Costume and Textile Arts with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She is the co-presenting curator of Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade (Legion of Honor, through September 2017), as well as a catalogue contributor. She is also the curator of Beyond the Surface: Worldwide Embroidery Traditions (de Young Museum, through January 2018). Laura Camerlengo previously held curatorial positions in the costume and textiles department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She holds a Master of Arts degree in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from Parsons, the New School for Design/Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
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