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The Santa Barbara Fiber Arts Guild invites the public to a free presentation by internationally recognized textile curator and appraiser Melissa Leventon this Saturday, June 6, from 9:30 a.m. to noon at the Goleta Valley Community Center, 5679 Hollister Ave., Goleta. Leventon will present “Fit for a Queen,” highlighting the costume exhibition she co-developed with the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles.
Hired in 2006 by the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok to advise the project architect on transforming a 19th-century office building into a 21st-century museum of fashion and textiles, Leventon and her colleagues were granted access to Queen Sirikit’s fashionable Pierre Balmain couture wardrobe dating from the 1960s, a privilege that few other Westerners had enjoyed. Leventon, working with several Thai colleagues, developed the “Fit for a Queen” exhibition based on this wardrobe, which explored the development of the Queen’s distinctive sartorial style as envisioned by Balmain, the embroidery house Lesage, and the Queen herself.
“Melissa brings a remarkable combination of scholarly expertise and firsthand experience,” said Programs Director Laurie Gross-Schaefer. “Her work with the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles offers a fascinating perspective on fashion history, museum curation, and the stories textiles tell about culture and identity.”
A founding partner of Curatrix Group, Leventon is an internationally recognized specialist in European and American costume and textiles. She formerly served as Curator-in-Charge of Textiles at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She teaches fashion history and theory at California College of the Arts and has been a senior consultant to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles since 2006. She is also the author of “Art Wear: Fashion and Anti-Fashion.”
Social time and guild announcements begin at 9:30 a.m., with the featured presentation beginning at 10 a.m. Free parking is available at the venue. For more information, visit www.sbfiberarts.org/upcoming.
The Santa Barbara Fiber Arts Guild preserves and promotes fiber arts through demonstrations, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, publications, and other educational programs. The guild welcomes the public to its monthly meetings, held on the first Saturday of each month. Learn more at http://www.sbfiberarts.org.
