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Visible Mending

Collected Item: “Repair and Design Futures”

Title

Repair and Design Futures

Website

https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/repair-and-design-futures

Social media

https://www.instagram.com/risdmuseum/

Overview

Repair, a humble act born of necessity, expresses resistance to the unmaking of our world and the environment. This exhibition investigated mending as material intervention, metaphor, and call to action.

Type of event

Exhibition

Format of event

Gallery installation

Subject(s) covered

Mending, repair, design as repair, design futures

Period(s) and/or Region(s) explored

1700-2017, worldwide

Date of event

October 5, 2018 - June 30, 2019

Intended audience

The hope was to encourage engagement across a broad spectrum of perspectives

Host institution or venue

RISD Museum

Related series / program(s)

Lost in the Museum, RISD October 5, 2018 - August 25, 2019

Educational component

Full events program; talks, conversations, workshops, performances, screenings

Event in more detail

Repair, a humble act born of necessity, expresses resistance to the unmaking of our world and the environment. This exhibition and programming series investigated mending as material intervention, metaphor, and call to action. Spanning the globe and more than three centuries, these objects reveal darns, patches, and stabilized areas that act as springboards to considering socially engaged design thinking today. Repair invites renewed forms of social exchange and offers alternative, holistic ways of facing environmental and social breakdown.

On display in this multiuse gallery space were costume and textile objects from the collections of the RISD Museum and Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. In Café Pearl (at the Benefit Street entrance) and the Donghia Costume and Textile Gallery and Study Center (sixth floor), related exhibitions investigated additional approaches to repair.

Bio of creator

Kate Irvin is curator and head of the Costume and Textiles department 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 across the globe.

Link to catalogue or programme

https://archive.org/details/LitID3640Manual11

Link to report or article about event

https://risdmuseum.org/art-design/projects-publications/articles/design-as-repair

Host City or Region

Providence RI
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