Corsets: Handmade, Manmade, and Man-worn

In October, Val Mayse brought her University of Washington corset-making class to the Collections Study Center to look at and draw inspiration from a selection of the nearly 40 corsets (dating from 1800 to 1960)  in the Henry’s Costumes and Textiles Collection. (For more information about this collection, including a Google Earth tour of where [...]

Interview with Salvatore Salamone, Costume Designer and Yes Men Collaborator

On the occasion of the museum’s screening of the Yes Men (Tonight! @ 7 PM): An interview with Salvatore Salamone, costume designer extraordinaire and Yes Men collaborator.  (Yes, this is the man behind the Management Leisure Suit and Survival Ball costumes.) Salvatore, who is based in Los Angeles, has contributed his costume design skills to [...]

Argentina: Hope in Hard Times – Screening Tomorrow Night

Argentina: Hope in Hard Times (2005) is  Seattle filmmakers Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young’s documentary of the creative and inspiring grassroots effort to rebuild communities in the aftermath of Argentina’s 2001 economic collapse. Join in the processions and protests, attend street-corner neighborhood assemblies, visit workers’ cooperatives and urban gardens, and take a close-up look at [...]

The Henry Hosts Big Brothers Big Sisters

Last Saturday, the Henry education team paired one of our favorite high school programs – the longstanding Roosevelt High School Partnership program, through which museum staff train Roosevelt students to lead public gallery tours – with a champion group of matches from Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound. (A Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) [...]

Robert Mapplethorpe x 3

Tonight in the auditorium: James Crump’s documentary Black White + Gray about the powerful troika formed by Mapplethorpe, curator Sam Wagstaff, and musician/poet Patti Smith. We begin at 7:00. On view in the North Galleries through January 31: Polaroids: Mapplethorpe, an exhibition of 90 early Mapplethorpe Polaroids organized by Henry Director Sylvia Wolfe. (Quoting the [...]

The Evolution of Paisley

Tanya Knannlein brought two Seattle Central textile technology and design classes to the Collections Study Center last week to look at and sketch examples of woven and hand-printed fabrics. Henry Collections Curator Judy Sourakli discussed the various techniques used to produce the textiles and fragments on hand: ikat, batik, compound weave and block/hand printing, among [...]

“Found In Coat Pocket”

Last week, I came across this in one of the textile collection binders: Per our records, this particular bonnet was found by museum staff in the pocket of a donated object: a c. 1970s white mink stroller coat.  (Also in the pocket was the white leather belt that tied the whole look together.) There is [...]

Henry Open House: DJ Dr. Lehl

Rich Lehl (handle: DJ Dr. Lehl) has been DJing for just shy of 10 years. You may remember him from the past three Halloween parties at the Hideout, the 007 New Years party (in 2007) at Ouch My Eye Studio, and the 2009 SOIL Annual Art Auction. Tomorrow night, he will be providing the soundtrack [...]

New England, Autumn

Anyone else from New England?  I saw this painting in storage the other day… …and I had a rare feeling of disappointment in Seattle and its slow, monochrome autumns. Heart of New England, a c. 1910-14 landscape in oil by Edmund Henry Garrett,  is from the collection of Horace C. Henry who gifted his works [...]

The Yosemite Valley

Abigail Guay here – the new Collections Access and Outreach Manager. This is my first Hankblog post. You will be hearing from me whenever something in the world reminds me of something in the Henry’s collections and/or whenever something in the Henry’s collections reminds me of something in the world. I am transmitting from the [...]