{"id":23466,"date":"2019-04-04T19:50:34","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23466"},"modified":"2019-04-04T19:50:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:50:44","slug":"museum-opens-cupboards-to-show-fabric-of-aurora","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/museum-opens-cupboards-to-show-fabric-of-aurora\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum opens cupboards to show fabric of Aurora"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Beth Hess\ncouldn\u2019t help but lean to get a closer look at the Aurora Museum & Archives\nlast week \u2013 after all, it\u2019s not every day your wedding gown is displayed on a\nmannequin for all to see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, not\nevery woman walks down the aisle in a family heirloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s exactly\nwhat Mary Beth did when she tied the knot with her husband, Richard, donning\nthe same gown her mother wore when she married her father a generation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This well-loved\nwedding gown is one of the centrepieces of The Wardrobes of Aurora, a new\nexhibition launched this month by the Aurora Museum & Archives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running through\nSeptember and guest-curated by masters students from the University of Toronto,\nThe Wardrobes of Aurora opens the closet door on the history of Aurora \u2013 births,\nmarriages and deaths \u2013 as told through textiles in the collection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am not from\nAurora, I\u2019m not from Canada, but working with this collection, I found it a way\nto connect with the past,\u201d said University of Toronto student Rong Zou, who\nco-curated the collection with fellow students Rachel Dice, Carolyn Ben and\nJessica Ho. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was a sentiment\nechoed by other members of this quartet, who shared in the excitement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just can\u2019t\nbelieve we actually got this open,\u201d said Ms. Dice, who worked as an intern at\nthe Museum this past summer. \u201cI have been working with these textiles since\nJuly, so to see them out of their boxes and out of their wrapping, onto a wall\nand being used, appreciated and learned from is just amazing. We all get into\nmuseum studies so we can touch stuff, but we never actually think we\u2019ll get to\nshow stuff. Being able to make those decisions and to work with my amazing\nteammates has been awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Dice has always\nhad an interest in textiles, growing up with a mom who works in the clothing\nindustry. She came onto this project as a \u201ctextile expert\u201d but said going\nthrough this curatorial process, she came out the other side as an \u201ceverything\nelse expert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was so much fun\njust to go into a collection and open a box,\u201d said Ms. Ben. \u201cYou would be\namazed at what you would find inside. It was amazing to find the stories behind\nthe objects and to learn about Aurora. It was just lovely to learn about the\nfamilies and their histories here. As a group, we would just like to thank the\nmuseum, especially Michelle Johnson and Shawna White. They held our hands every\nstep of the way \u2013 and I would like to thank everyone who has donated clothing\nor just objects to the Museum over the years. Without them, we wouldn\u2019t have\nthis exhibition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sense of pride\nwas shared by Museum Curator Shawna White and coordinator Michelle Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. White said she\nwas \u201cthrilled\u201d to see the exhibition come into full bloom in this, their fourth\npartnership with the students at the U of T\u2019s Master of Museum Studies program.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMichelle was the\nfirst person who came here [from the program] and she just hung around and we\nhad to hire her!\u201d said Ms. White. \u201cThe exceptional quality of work that is done\nby these student is consistent year after year and we are so pleased by it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added Ms. Johnson to\nthe student curators: \u201cYou were fantastic and very creative and inventive. This\nwas a tricky exhibit for us because it was very textile-based. We hadn\u2019t done\nan exhibit that required so many mounting and display solutions for textiles,\nso it was a bit of an adventure for us and it was really exciting because we\ngot to show off part of the textile collection which we have been working to\nrehouse for two or three years. We\u2019re almost finished, thanks to Rachel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more on the Aurora Museum & Archives,\nas well as The Wardrobes of Aurora, visit www.auroramuseum.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mary Beth Hess couldn\u2019t help but lean to get a closer look at the Aurora Museum & Archives last week \u2013 after all, it\u2019s not every day your wedding gown is displayed on a mannequin for all to see. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-66u","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-01 19:05:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/2019-04-04-02.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}