The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design will celebrate entrepreneurial women's position in Nebraska through a craft exhibit.
According to the College of Education and Human Sciences website, the exhibit will be available from April 12 to July 13, 2019, at the Nebraska History Museum. The exhibit’s opening night will be Friday, April 12, with fun, interactive activities. The event is free for the public.
The exhibition, titled “Crafting Culture: Women and the Business of Textiles in Nebraska,” will showcase crafts made during a workshop series and a research project. The department and the Asian Community and Cultural Center partnered to create the exhibit to represent the state’s history.
The workshop, "Crafting Culture in the Middle of Everywhere,” took place in spring 2018 and aimed to connect women’s contributions in the textile industry to Nebraska’s history and to bring immigrant and refugee communities and long-term Nebraska residents together.
Claire Nicholas, assistant professor of textiles, merchandising and fashion design, said she and Surin Kim, assistant professor of textiles, merchandising and fashion design and co-initiator of the project, created the workshop to initiate empathy between non-American women and female Nebraska residents.
“Our project has been designed to bring collaborative craft-making and micro-entrepreneurship as [a] means to create healthy, vibrant communities among audiences with diverse backgrounds, first in Lincoln and later statewide,” Kim said in an email.
This exhibit helps bring people from the Nebraska community together to interact and learn from one another, according to Sharon Kennedy, curator of education at the Nebraska History Museum.
To create the exhibit at the museum, the UNL Department of Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design and the Asian Community and Cultural Center came together in a partnership to represent this Nebraska history.
These departments aim to show women’s representation in society and share the cultural benefits from people of different backgrounds, Nicholas said.
According to Kennedy, the project is a form of female empowerment because they will see their work on display with objects from other professional women who have worked on the project and continue to work in textiles.
“It helps the broader community see the talent and skills that refugee women bring,” she said.
Although the primary goal of the event is female empowerment, Nicholas said the event organizers hope the project makes women feel more connected to the community and gives them a sense of belonging.
“It might give them the ability to have more confidence in themselves,” she said.
(Article courtesy of the Daily Nebraskan)