Workbook
Clothes Tell Stories is an on-line Costume Workbook, a web-based resource for museums, students and the general public about how to use costume to tell stories:
Costume is extremely evocative and always has an immediate appeal in museums. Clothes so easily illustrate many kinds of stories because, when correctly used, they bring an extremely personal, engaging aspect to our history. Costume Committee members – expert costume curators and conservators from museums all over the world – are contributing their expertise in this project. It will illustrate many aspects of working with historical costume which will be useful for non-specialists: terminology, exhibition techniques, successful labels, contemporary collecting, aspects of proper storage and handling, exhibition walk-throughs and much more.
Since many small and/or specialty museums do not have access to personnel trained in working with costume, we hope Clothes Tell Stories can help teach how to store, handle and show costume and accessories. This will not only bring less-known historical costume out in the open, but will contribute to creating valuable new contacts between museums and ICOM specialists.
This exciting site was introduced at the ICOM Triennial General Conference in Rio de Janeiro in August 2013.
Information for authors:
The ICOM Costume Committee welcomes warmly new authors who would like to contribute an article. Please read the information PDF: