Kate Irvin

Curator and Head, Costume & Textiles
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Kate Irvin
BA, Brown University

Kate Irvin is curator and head of the department of Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum. There she oversees a collection of 30,000 fashion and textile items that range in date from 1500 BCE to the present and represent traditions and innovations from across the globe.

Her most recent exhibition Sensing Fashion (2023) was curated in collaboration with Associate Professor Lisa Z. Morgan (Apparel Design) and Alexandra Emberley (RISD MFA 2023, Textiles), an experimental consideration of a selection of contemporary designer fashions through the amplifying lenses of a digital microscope, a roving camera and a digital embroidery machine, to create a place of immersive intimacy. In 2022–23, Irvin co-curated the initiative Inherent Vice with textile conservators Jessica Urick and Anna Rose Keefe, a project that comprised a yearlong exhibition, deaccessioning and other collections-care activities, community-building conversations and related RISD courses and creative output produced therein. As a whole, the project reframed collections care as a reparative, empathetic act that embraces both literal and metaphorical cracks as opportunities for revealing and making room for neglected narratives.

Previously Irvin curated Repair and Design Futures (2018–19), another yearlong multidisciplinary exhibition and programming initiative that investigated mending as material intervention, metaphor and call to action. With Markus Berger, she co-edited a related book Repair: Sustainable Design Futures, published by Routledge in 2022.

Other exhibitions and projects at the RISD Museum include: From the Loom of a Goddess: Reverberations of Guatemalan Maya Weaving (2018); Designing Traditions: Student Explorations in the Asian Textile Collections (2017); All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion (2016); and Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion (2013).

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

THAD H656-01 - A GLOBAL HISTORY OF TEXTILES: TRADES, TRADITIONS, TECHNIQUES
Level Undergraduate
Unit Textiles
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

THAD H656-01

A GLOBAL HISTORY OF TEXTILES: TRADES, TRADITIONS, TECHNIQUES

Level Undergraduate
Unit Textiles
Subject Theory & History of Art & Design
Period Fall 2023
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: T | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Kate Irvin, Laurie Brewer Location(s): College Building, Room 331 Enrolled / Capacity: 12 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Interdisciplinary by their very nature, textile traditions share a global history. Around the world textiles have found place in cultures as signifiers of social identity, from the utilitarian to the sacred, as objects of ritual meaning and as objects of great tangible wealth. The evolution of textile motifs, designs, materials and technology from around the globe will be explored in classroom lecture and utilizing the RISD Museum of Art. We will examine such topics as: the function of textiles in the survival of traditional cultures, the impact of historic trade routes and ensuing colonialism, industrialization and its subsequent effect on traditional techniques of textile manufacture. Thoughtful and scholarly consideration will be given to recent incidents of cultural appropriation in the global textile and fashion industry. Term projects utilizing the material culture approach will afford students the opportunity to gain valuable research skills and explore in-depth specific textile techniques.


Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students. Textiles Students can be pre-registered by the department.

Elective

Spring 2024 Courses

LAEL 1082-01 - MANY HANDS, MANY VOICES: TEXTILE HISTORIES IN THE AMERICAS
Level Undergraduate
Unit Textiles
Subject Liberal Arts Elective
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

LAEL 1082-01

MANY HANDS, MANY VOICES: TEXTILE HISTORIES IN THE AMERICAS

Level Undergraduate
Unit Textiles
Subject Liberal Arts Elective
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Lecture
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: T | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Kate Irvin Location(s): College Building, Room 331 Enrolled / Capacity: 12 Status: Closed

SECTION DESCRIPTION

This course explores the entangled histories of modern textiles in the Americas, highlighting the many hands and voices that can be seen and heard in their creation, exchange, assemblage, and use. Examined as an infinite web of relationships via the lens of Martinican philosopher douard Glissant, the textile histories covered will spiral through the 18th to 21st centuries and will touch on Native North American regalia incorporating trade cloth and glass beads; New England industrially printed cottons; patchwork quilts made by the African-American matriarchs of Gee's Bend, Alabama; indigenous Mayan traje of Guatemala; Chilean underground protest arpilleras; and Haitian beaded and sequined vodou flags, among many others. Colonialism and empire lie at the heart of textile histories during this era. Care will be taken to underscore the inextricable relationship between 19th-century textile production and enslaved laborers and knowledge keepers. At the same time we will cultivate an understanding of the self-determination, embodied engagement, and political activism that textiles have continuously afforded dispossessed communities. These narratives will unfold from objects selected from the collections of the RISD Museum that will be made available for consideration and study at close range with curators. The firsthand experiences will be guided and enriched by guest lectures and workshops by visiting scholars and artists whose work centers on the particular histories examined, as well as field trips to the Tomaquag Indigenous Museum and Slater Mill Historic Site. Through active engagement with tangible objects and exposure to a plurality of voices, students in the course not only will gain an embodied understanding of textile histories of the Americas, but also will find space for moving through and beyond colonial inheritances.

Textiles Students can be pre-registered by the department. Open to Sophomore, Junior, Senior or Graduate Students.

Elective

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Kate Irvin
BA, Brown University