Swedish Textiles

Part of our requirement in our program is to participate in an assistantship. We earn money toward school and we get on-the-job experience from the beginning of our program. This process starts with a Museum Match Night. Where Museums and other Non-Profits in and around Philadelphia set up displays and describe the kind of assistantship and experience they offer to prospective students. The institutions score because they get free labor and us students score because we get hands-on experience.

Carrie, the curator at the American Swedish Historical Museum, was the first person I approached and the person and opportunity the left the most impact on me. The way she talked about her most recent exhibition showed that she is very passionate about her work. And the way she described the graphic treatment of that exhibition showed that she could be on page with my photographic suggestions. Also, I would be helping CREATE an exhibition, an exhibition on textiles, that would be up for 4 years. My crafty and ambitious selves were very excited.

My friend and classmate, Isabelle, was also interested in the assistantship and we agreed to try to get Carrie to bring both of us on. Right away, there would be a broad range of expertise. Isabelle and her experience as a graphic designer for museums in San Diego and my background in photography plus my love for sewing and knitting. This approach turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

So early October, I begin taking the Broad Street line with high school students and people who clearly worked at Urban Outfitter’s Headquarters, down to south, south Philly. Then walk along FDR park before arriving at the tiny mansion that houses the museum, all alone in the park. It always felt like I was leaving the city for the day because its so quiet down there.

We would start by researching Swedish textiles then move to creating an outline that would drive our exhibition narrative. At first I constantly felt overwhelmed and that I didn’t know what I was doing. But by the time Carrie had us sit down and write out our outline. We were ready to break it up into manageable pieces: Mission and big Idea. From there, we had a better idea what we should be including in our outline. That was around December, and we took off for a month to go home during break.

When we came back, we started working on the narrative that would eventually be incorporated in panels and labels. Also, Isabelle and I sat down and started figuring out the graphic treatment of the exhibition. Closer to the opening, April 30, we uninstalled the old exhibition and started installing our exhibition. I was asked to produce images of details of different techniques which I’m excited to say are on the panels and look really good.

We ran into problems with the quality of the printing from the original printer and wound up going with an even better place. But those problems pushed back when the graphic panels would be produced and they wound up being installed the day before the opening.

The opening was held the same day as Valbourg. Were they have a chorus sing, then beer and hot dogs and the even ends with a bonfire.

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