Center for Virtual/Material Studies
Global textiles, pigments, and dyes have been ongoing research themes for the Center for Virtual/Material Studies (CVMS) in the past year.
Last fall the center collaborated with the Penn State University Libraries' Eberly Family Special Collections Library on an exhibition about the science, art, and history of dyes and their uses in books and manuscripts called "Sad Purple and Mauve: A History of Dye-Making,” which was on display from September 2023 through January 2024 and included a number of curator-led tours and other special events. In conjunction with the exhibition, Sylvia Houghteling, associate professor of history of art at Bryn Mawr College, presented "Perishable Dyes and the Season in Early Modern Asia," a lecture on fugitive dyes in early modern South Asia. Leading up to the exhibition, center staff worked with faculty and students from across the university to reproduce dyes from a late 17th/early 18th century Scottish manuscript held in the Penn State Special Collections Library, known as the Barclay Manuscript. Read more about the exhibition in the article, "Curators' Notes: Sad Purple and Mauve,” published in Journal18: a journal of eighteenth century art and culture.
A significant part of the year was spent planning for the first in-person convening in May 2024 of the Colonial Transatlantic Pigment Study Group supported by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and generously supplemented by funding from the Penn State University Libraries. Participants included faculty and graduate students from the University of Delaware, Rutgers University, Queen Mary University of London, Cornell University, The Courtauld Institute of Art, the College of William & Mary, and the Library of Congress. Participants presented their research and discussed future areas of study inspired by the center’s in-progress dataset of Philadelphia pigment merchants and spent time making pigments. Dr. Brendan Culleton from Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment also instructed the group on techniques of material characterization using pXRF for pigment identification with two paintings at the Palmer Museum of Art.
The CVMS continued its collaboration with the School of Theatre to create a publicly accessible digital inventory of their Fashion Archive, a hands-on collection of clothing and fashion accessories dating from 1850-1990. A Student Engagement Network (SEN) Group Grant in collaboration with the Max and Shirley Kogan Museum Experience Fund was awarded to Fashion Archive director Charlene Gross (associate professor of costume design in the School of Theatre) and CVMS manager Carolyn Lucarelli to fund a new Fashion Archive Internship Experience for two undergraduate students for the summer of 2024. The internship provided an opportunity for the students to gain experience working in the Fashion Archive and the CVMS and to visit both local and national museum textile collections and facilities to introduce them to the possibilities within the field of museum studies. See this Penn State News article to learn more about this unique experience.
The center’s graduate student assistants Marie Huard (Art Education), Ian Danner (Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies), and Sofia Rodriguez (Art History) were involved in multiple workshops, demos, and courses this past year. Marie was active with course engagement, teaching five sessions, and also led a workshop on data weaving for Love Data week in February. Ian taught five sessions as well, led a felting workshop for the College Staff Appreciation Day, and, with Sarah Rich, co-led a community felting workshop for the College's "Breaking Bread and Barriers" series. Sofia became the center's resident woad expert, leading two workshops on making woad dye during the year, and also worked on the Philadelphia pigment merchants dataset for the center's transatlantic pigment convening.
The CVMS participated in a collaborative exhibition with other members of the Penn State Museum Consortium (PSUMC) titled, “Cabinet of Curiosities: Collecting Then and Now.” Some of the center’s items related to historic dyes and the Barclay manuscript were included in the exhibition, which was on display at the HUB from March through August 2024.
The CVMS hosted lectures and workshops over the past year and provided demonstrations for several courses on topics such as flax processing, wool spinning, weaving, dyeing, making mud cloth, lamp black, and oak gall ink.
At the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) annual conference in Pittsburgh in April, Carolyn Lucarelli and research assistant Catherine Adams presented a poster on the Barclay manuscript dye recipes, and associate director John Russell presented a paper on digital art history pedagogy.
Center director Sarah Rich was interviewed by the National Geographic for a short piece about the history of linen, and she was also featured in a video as part of the Artforum Interpretations series where she discusses Frank Stella's painting Union III.
More information on the center’s projects and events, including the 2024 annual report, can be found on the CVMS website.