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labricoleuseFive-time Tony-winning costume designer William Ivey Long is the subject of a retrospective exhibit at the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC. The exhibit takes up the entire museum and features original costumes displayed on mannequins, costume renderings, collages, fabric samples, hats, shoes, you name it. Costumes from Nine, Cabaret, La Cage aux Folles, The Producers, Hairspray, and many more shows are featured. The exhibit is by tour only, two tours a day (11:30am & 2pm), and is $10 for non-members of the museum.
As a professional in the industry, i particularly enjoyed the setup of the displays--you can get right up within inches of almost all of the costumes and really study the workmanship on them. (The exception to this is the Pearl Girls from the film version of The Producers, which are apparently too expensive for insurance to allow them to be accessible to the public--they are in a separate room and are viewable through windows.) Often the costumes are presented in tandem with designs or research images, so it's cool to be able to see a rendering and then see the costume itself. The museum has produced a lovely full-color catalogue to accompany the exhibit, with tons of color photos and facinating text.
What i did not enjoy was our tour guide's misinformation--often she spouted erroneous details about the costumes, attributing techniques and methods as having been "invented" by Mr. Long when in fact they were not. A couple of examples: Mr. Long did not invent the concept of cutting dresses on the bias (Madeleine Vionnet did), nor did he invent the silicone technique for surface treatment of stretch fabrics (Janet Bloor did); he used these techniques successfully in his designs, certainly, but our guide mistakenly attributed them as being "created" by him. She completely ignored or glossed over the work of production professionals, which was a pretty bitter pill for me. I realize that she was not herself a costume professional or scholar, and that probably her statements were the result of innocent misunderstandings rather than intent. Still, I found it professionally insulting. It was not however so offensive that it remotely outweighed the value of the opportunity to see the costumes and renderings and such that made up the exhibit.
As a crafts artisan, the most exciting part of the exhibit for me was the Siegfried and Roy gallery, which was full of amazing headdresses, masks, and an entire macropuppet army engineered by crafts artisan extraordinaire Michael Curry. It was quite a treat to be able to inspect the mechanisms of the puppet army, which consisted of costumes in which one operator manipulated a squad of marching "soldiers," so that one person gave the impression of being nine people.
Here's a Flickr photo set of press photos of some of the costumes by WHQR. The exhibition runs through October 14, and is a one-shot-only deal--it will not travel to any other museum, so if you want to see it, you'd best plan a trip to Wilmington.
As a professional in the industry, i particularly enjoyed the setup of the displays--you can get right up within inches of almost all of the costumes and really study the workmanship on them. (The exception to this is the Pearl Girls from the film version of The Producers, which are apparently too expensive for insurance to allow them to be accessible to the public--they are in a separate room and are viewable through windows.) Often the costumes are presented in tandem with designs or research images, so it's cool to be able to see a rendering and then see the costume itself. The museum has produced a lovely full-color catalogue to accompany the exhibit, with tons of color photos and facinating text.
What i did not enjoy was our tour guide's misinformation--often she spouted erroneous details about the costumes, attributing techniques and methods as having been "invented" by Mr. Long when in fact they were not. A couple of examples: Mr. Long did not invent the concept of cutting dresses on the bias (Madeleine Vionnet did), nor did he invent the silicone technique for surface treatment of stretch fabrics (Janet Bloor did); he used these techniques successfully in his designs, certainly, but our guide mistakenly attributed them as being "created" by him. She completely ignored or glossed over the work of production professionals, which was a pretty bitter pill for me. I realize that she was not herself a costume professional or scholar, and that probably her statements were the result of innocent misunderstandings rather than intent. Still, I found it professionally insulting. It was not however so offensive that it remotely outweighed the value of the opportunity to see the costumes and renderings and such that made up the exhibit.
As a crafts artisan, the most exciting part of the exhibit for me was the Siegfried and Roy gallery, which was full of amazing headdresses, masks, and an entire macropuppet army engineered by crafts artisan extraordinaire Michael Curry. It was quite a treat to be able to inspect the mechanisms of the puppet army, which consisted of costumes in which one operator manipulated a squad of marching "soldiers," so that one person gave the impression of being nine people.
Here's a Flickr photo set of press photos of some of the costumes by WHQR. The exhibition runs through October 14, and is a one-shot-only deal--it will not travel to any other museum, so if you want to see it, you'd best plan a trip to Wilmington.
