Collections and Connections Across Five Continents: An introduction to the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection

Organized by the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at the George Washington University Museum and the Textile Museum, Washington D.C. (USA)

October 21, 2020, 10 am-1 pm (EDT)-October 22, 2020, 1 pm-4 pm (EDT)

The Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection represents a lifetime of collecting by business leader and philanthropist Llyod Cotsen (1929-2017). Nearly 4.000 textile of small size, fragments or garments, from all over the world offer insights into human creativity from antiquity to the present.

The collection was donated to the George Washington University in 2018, and it is now housed in the new Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center at the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum.

The Cotsen Textile Traces Global Roundtable commemorates the new study center and offers a glimpse of the richness of the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection.

Beginning with an introduction to Mr. Cotsen’s collecting and an overview of the collection and study center, the roundtable will feature five one-hour panels highlighting textiles from five continents.

This inaugural roundtable seeks to encourage textile research, facilitate critical discussion, support cultural diversity and preserve cultural heritage by creating direct connections between collection objects and current research and art-making, while engaging with scholars, curators, conservators, and artists.

Visit: https://museum.gwu.edu/cotsen-textile-traces-global-roundtable

Program and more information: Roundtable e-program booklet

Image: Patchwork trade cloth robe (detail), Indonesia, 18th century. Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection T-2852. Bruce M. White Photography.