Curatorial Strategies for the Display of Dress

This two-day workshop was organised by the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC)together with the Research Collective Decolonizing Fashion (RCDF). The RCMC is the research institute of the National Museum of World Cultures (Tropenmuseum, Museum Volkenkunde, Africa Museum) and the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam. Established in 2015, the Center fosters critical approaches to the museums’ collections, to our complex histories and to our practices of collecting and display, in relation to broader societal questions. The Research Collective for Decolonising Fashion (RCDF) was established to disrupt persistent Eurocentric and ethnocentric underpinnings of dominant fashion discourse and to construct alternative narratives. The intention of the two-day workshop - Decolonizing Fashion, Refashioning Objects In The Ethnographic Museum - was to critically explore overlapping discourses of museums histories and practices, and the aesthetic concepts that have informed the category of fashion, to engender a decolonized conception of what fashion is and can be. At this workshop, Moloney presented concepts for Curatorial Strategies for the Display of Dress which test curatorial practices within the context of dress and fashion curatorship. This was followed by a workshop in the archive led by Moloney on object reading and interpretation