Anatomy of the Fashion Museum

Exhibition: 17-19 May 2019, Mona Bismarck American Centre, 34 Avenue de New York, 75116  

Anatomy of the Fashion Museum was an exhibition that explored issues of fashion museology, curated by MA Fashion Studies students in the course Curating Fashion: History, Theory and Practice taught by Laurent Cotta, curator and Head of Graphic Design at Palais Galliera Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition used the Palais Galliera as a case study to investigate four different museological practices: collecting, inventorying, conserving, and exhibiting. During the spring semester of 2019, students had unique access to the museum’s departments, studied internal documentation, participated in hands-on workshops on the different techniques, and worked with curators and conservators at Palais Galliera.  

Anatomy of the Fashion Museum presented the results of this work, deliberately quoting and taking inspiration from the exhibition Anatomie d’une Collection (2016) that showcased key pieces from the museum’s archive to present the nature and diversity of the collection at Palais Galliera. Students were asked to select four garments from this show and use them as key entry to further expand Galliera’s reflection and showcase the museological practices hidden behind these pieces. Inspired by Aby Warburg’s Atlas Mnemosyne, each of the four metal grids constructed an atlas, a narrative for each museological practice through the presentation of the museum’s documentation, interviews with Galliera’s staff, exhibition catalogs, and other secondary sources. Each grid showcases the quotidien and bureaucratic activities of curators and conservators while also contextualizing their work to reveal the mechanics and ideologies governing these fashion museum practices.

Anatomy of the Fashion Museum exposed the behind-the-scenes of Palais Galliera and suggested a definition of fashion in museums as more than a matter of staging garments in an exhibition space. Further, the exhibition invited visitors to reflect on the complexity of the actions, negotiations, and bureaucratic mediation that construct and mirror the perpetual reformulations of the meanings and values of fashion inside the museum.  

CURATION: Molly Apple, Danielle Barnes, Berline Cherelus, Kandace Clifton, Nicolette Contursi, Sandra Mathey Garcia-Rada, Deandra Green, Fanny Lerner, Clara Montre, Victoria Nergaard, Or Rosenblum, Rocio Sanchez, Svitlana Soboloyeva, Amanda Stedman. CONCEPT & COORDINATION: Laurent Cotta, Marco Pecorari. EXHIBITION DESIGN & PRODUCTION: Justin Morin. RESEARCH SUPPORT: Antoine Bucher. GRAPHIC DESIGN: Monica Fraile Morisson. COMMUNICATION: Lisa Sarma & PRC Communication. ASSISTANTS: Sandra Mathey Garcia-Rada, Amanda Stedman, Olivia Johnston