Avenir Institute of Textile Arts and Fashion

Highlights

Perhaps the two best known areas of the textile art department are its internationally exhibited and widely published American quilt collection and its extensive holdings of late Qing Dynasty Chinese court robes and textiles.

This diverse department, however, contains a wide-ranging scope from art of the ancient Americas and Coptic archaeological textiles to contemporary works of art in fiber and overlaps culturally and/or chronologically with the departments of Asian art, art of the ancient Americas, Latin American art, painting and sculpture, Western art, and modern and contemporary art. Objects under its curatorial charge include all textiles in the Denver Art Museum except those in our Indigenous Arts of North America, African, and Oceanic collections—stewarded by the Native arts department—textiles and rugs in the Herbert Bayer collection, and certain contemporary art that utilizes textiles and/or textile techniques.

Recent acquisitions include contemporary fashion from designers from the turn of the century through today, and over 100 fashion illustrations by artist, Jim Howard. Among the developing areas of the collection include fashion not only designed by famous couturiers, but from the collection of prominent women including the Baroness of Rothschild, Catherine Deneuve, and Catherine "Deeda" Blair.

Specific collection highlights include:

• An internationally recognized collection of more than 300 American quilts. These include examples made and donated by Charlotte Jane Whitehill (1866-1964). Also notable are the mid-19th century quilts; crazy quilts; and Amish and Mennonite quilts.
• More than 100 American coverlets representing overshot, double cloth, and Biederwand techniques and including significant gifts from both Mrs. S. Effie Parkhill and Stewart and Carol Strickler.
• The Julia Wolf Glasser collection, given by Mr. and Mrs. Raymond L. Grimes, comprises more than 100 samplers, dating from the 18th and 19th centuries and made in Europe, North and South America.
• The Charlotte Hill Grant collection of more than 600 Chinese court costumes and accessories—primarily late Qing Dynasty—acquired by Mrs. Grant in China in the 1920s and 1930s, and subsequently gifted to the museum by her children, James P. Grant and Betty Austin Grant, in 1977.
• Ecclesiastical vestments and textiles from the Renaissance to the 1900s, particularly the gift of Rev. John Krenzke of 19th- and 20th-century vestments.
• A growing collection of contemporary art in fiber including works by Mark Adams, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lia Cook, Carol Eckert, Sheila O’Hara, and Carol Shinn. As well as rare early work by artists Olga de Amaral, Marian Bijlenga, Nick Cave, and Lenore Tawney among others, which were gifted in 2019 from the private collection of the founder of Friends of Fiber International, Camille Cook.
• Peruvian cultures, including the Chavín, Moche, Nasca, Wari, Chancay, Chimu, and Inca are well represented in the Art of the Ancient Americas portion of the textile collection.
• A collection of contemporary fashion from designers working in Paris in the 1980s and 90s, including Azzedine Alaïa, Anne-Marie Beretta, Rei Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons), Helmut Lang, Martin Margeila, Issey Miyake, Thierry Mugler, Kansai Yamamoto, and Yohji Yamamoto.
• A collection of over 100 works on paper by award-winning artist Jim Howard, showcasing Howard’s four-decade long fashion illustration career featuring advertising campaigns for legendary American department stores including: Neiman Marcus, Bonwit-Teller, and Bullocks which reflect the golden age of the American department store fashion throughout four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s.