Past Exhibitions

 Broadbent Gallery | Jean Druesedow, Director "The 1980s: an Age of Excess" will highlight the sparkle and glamour of the 20th century's ninth decade. Designer gowns and elegant street wear from Europe and America — including among others Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Ungaro, Chanel and Christian LaCroix, Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Patrick Kelly, Donna Karan, and Pauline Trigere — will be featured. Co-curated by Museum Director Jean Druesedow and Victoria Haworth, a senior fashion merchandising student at Kent State's Fashion School.

Broadbent Gallery | Judy Levin, Curator Magical Designs for Mozart's Magic Flute is an exhibition conceived and curated by distinguished theatrical and opera designer Judy Levin to compare scenic and costume designs of this much loved opera. These selected productions, extolled for their remarkable visual achievements, speak to the many interpretations given to the opera by scholars over the years, as well as the role of the creative teams in shaping each production.

 Higbee Gallery | Sara Hume, Curator  The exhibition, Fashions of Southern Africa, brings together the work of fashion designers currently active in South Africa and Namibia to showcase the ways that people in southern Africa dress, make clothes and think about fashion. The exhibition looks beyond a simple binary between “western fashion” and traditional African dress to see that there is original distinctive fashion in Africa.

Stager/Blum Galleries | Tameka Ellington, PhD and Stacey Lim, Au.D., PhD, Co-Curators

Focus: Fiber 2016 is a juried exhibition of contemporary fiber art coordinated by Textile Art Alliance. Textile Art Alliance (TAA), an affiliate group of the Cleveland Museum of Art, is an active organization of artists, designers, craftspeople, educators and collectors with a common interest in the textile and fiber arts.

Broadbent Gallery | Sara Hume, Curator The flapper is widely seen as the epitome of 1920s glamor and decadence. The term refers to the generation of young women who came to age just as World War I ended and shocked the older generation with their short hair and short skirts, their drinking and smoking and swearing.

Stager and Blum Galleries | Curators: Koon Hwee Kan and Janice Lessman-Moss We initiated this project as a celebration of more than three decades of diplomatic ties between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China. This exchange exhibit serves as an experimental channel for direct connections among contemporary studio faculty members in both cultures. Gravitating toward uniqueness is typical in new artistic creation and cultural expression, which may inadvertently overemphasize contradictory outcomes stemming from differences.

Higbee Gallery | Sara Hume, Curator The art of creating beautiful custom clothing has always entailed beautiful workmanship that is hidden when the pieces are worn. This exhibition showcases these secret inner-workings that are usually out of sight. Weights, pockets, quilted linings, boning, ruffles and labels all come to light when the garments are flipped inside out. 

Broadbent Gallery | Jean Druesedow, Director American designer Geoffrey Beene (1927–2004) was respected throughout the American fashion industry for the high technical quality of his work and his innovative, modernist designs. Although very fashionable, Mr. Beene’s collections were never trendy and always original. He took an artist’s approach to turning two-dimensional fabric into a three-dimensional shape for the body and was considered a designer’s designer. Garments from the Museum’s collection will trace his 40-year career.