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News Release

Last modified: Monday, November 14, 2011

Textile expert to speak at IU, art and design center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 14, 2011

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The curator of the Atlanta History Center's award-winning exhibition Gone With the Girdle: Freedom, Restraint & Power in Women's Dress will speak on IU's Bloomington campus and at the university's new center for art and design in Columbus this week.

Textile expert and visiting scholar Susan Neill will speak on "The Texture of Ideas: Dynamic Symmetry in the Handwoven Textiles of Mary Crovatt Hambidge" at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 15, in Whittenberger Auditorium at the Indiana Memorial Union, and again at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Indiana University Center for Art and Design-Columbus, 310 Jackson St. in downtown Columbus.

Funded by the Bill Blass Fashion Design Seminar Series, Neill's lecture is free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by IU's Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design and the Sage Collection.

As vice president of collections and exhibitions at the Atlanta History Center, Neill oversees curatorial functions, collections, exhibitions and three historic houses. She also serves as curator of textiles and social history, a collection composed of more than 10,000 textiles, clothing and personal accessories.

In 2003, Neill curated the center's award-winning exhibition Gone With the Girdle: Freedom, Restraint & Power in Women's Dress, which featured 65 mannequins along with a host of accessories, images and accounts from women in their own words. She co-authored a related book of historic photographs, Women in Atlanta, with Staci Catron-Sullivan. Currently, she is researching handwoven textiles by Mary Crovatt Hambidge and her north Georgia workshop, the Weavers of Rabun.

Before joining the center's staff in 1999, Neill spent two years as the Hope B. McCormick Costume Fellow at the Chicago Historical Society, where she developed exhibitions featuring 20th-century designer fashions. While earning a Master of Arts in cultural anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Neill worked with a collection of textiles from around the globe. She has presented her research at numerous professional conferences and serves on the board of the Costume Society of America.

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