Threads of Power

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery produces multiple exhibitions and publications each year, serving as a vital center of learning and a catalyst for engagement in the interrelated disciplines of decorative arts, design, and material culture. The gallery is celebrated in the museum world for its longstanding legacy of landmark projects dedicated to significant—yet often understudied—figures and movements in the history of decorative arts and design; these exhibitions and publications typically represent the definitive intervention on the artists and objects they investigate. BGC Gallery is also committed to generating and supporting a vast range of diverse presentations, small and large, that challenge traditional approaches to object inquiry; these examinations of material culture explore the human experience as manifest in our creation and use of “things” of all kinds. Whether originating in internal research and expertise, or in collaboration with external subject specialists, these endeavors prioritize rigorous scholarship while seeking to adhere to the field’s highest standards in production and design.

Laura Jacobs of the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Handmade lace has been called ‘white gold,’ and the BGC exhibition … shows us why.” Apollo magazine’s Eve Kahn concurred, writing that it “dazzlingly conveys not only how wearers of lace climbed social ladders, but also how they financed the careers of the women who stitched it with bleary eyes.” Roberta Smith of the New York Times noted that Threads of Power “gives New York its first in-depth look in nearly 40 years at the history of this intricate, fragile and costly textile.” Stephanie Sporn of ADPro remarked that the Isabel Toledo-designed ensemble worn by Michelle Obama for the 2009 presidential inauguration is one of the exhibition’s standouts, and Airmail’s Yona McDonough raved that Threads of Power “offers more than enough to ignite the heart and mind of any lace-lover.”

Exhibition Description

Lace—delicate, sumptuous, enigmatic—has been used in fashion and décor for centuries to project power and wealth. Trace the development of European lace from its sixteenth-century origins to the present day in Threads of Power. See more than 150 examples of lace from the renowned collection of Switzerland’s Textilmuseum St. Gallen, including some of the world’s finest examples of handmade needle and bobbin lace that were favored by the wealthy and powerful of Bourbon France and Habsburg Spain. Learn about the women who crafted this sought-after status symbol by hand and about the evolution of Swiss chemical lace, known as guipure lace, made on embroidery machines. Explore new innovations in lace production, like laser-cut and 3D-printed lace, used in contemporary haute couture.

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