Online Events

Coffee and Curators: Weaving Unraveled

Date and Time:  Wednesday, September 20, 3:30 p.m. (EDT)
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To the untrained eye fabric can just look like a piece of cloth, but experienced weavers can see the types of threads, the weaving methods, and more. Join noted weaver Suzanne Halvorson as she examines one of the museum's woven textiles and helps us learn how to see it in new ways.
 
Suzanne is a textile studio artist and partner in By Hand Gallery (IN). She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University School of Fine Arts, and at Earlham College (IN). She has taught weaving workshops at Penland School of Craft (NC), Ghost Ranch (NM), Grunewald Guild (WA), and at HGA's Convergence (CA) and for countless weaver's guilds and conferences. Her work is published in Handwoven, Shuttle, Spindle, and Dyepot, and Weaving for Worship. Suzanne's work is represented by: By Hand Gallery, Bloomington, IN; Marigold Arts, Santa Fe NM; Penland Gallery, Penland, NC; Columbus Visitor's Center, Columbus, IN; and Spear's Gallery, Nashville, IN.

 

 

Coffee and Curators: Tetela Amulets at the IUMAA--Reinterpreting a Medical Anthropology Collection as a Fashion Benchmark

Date and Time:  Thursday, October 12, 3 p.m. (EDT)
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A collection of objects from central Congo, gathered by an American aid worker in the 1920s and donated to IU in the 1980s, includes a sizeable number of amulets and divination tools.  While the IUMAA has classified it (appropriately) as “medical anthropology,” amulets are also items of dress.  As a fashion historian with expertise in African Studies, Heather Akou is interested in historic items of African dress in Western collections, which are almost never classified as “fashion.”  This discussion will explore how amulets looked and functioned in Tetela culture in the 1920s and speculate on what may (or may not) have changed over the last century.

Heather Akou is an associate professor in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and a core member of the MA in Curatorship program.)