Greetings List:

Here I go bravely.......

I am a new subscriber to the list attempting to learn about museums and
exhibitions through monitoring your discussion.

I grew up in a small town in central Alberta, Canada.  Throughout my childhood, my
mother supplemented the family income by working as a seamstress; she had a
small but thriving 'cottage" business which she ran from the basement of our
home.  She kept track of her sewing projects on the empty pages of scribblers
which her children (me; my three brothers) brought home from school.  She drew
sketches of the patterns she was using, recorded her clients' measurements and
pinned fabric swatches to the pages.  In this way, she documented thrity years of
her worklife.

I left home more than twenty years ago and now work as a sociologist in Toronto;
one of my areas of specialty is community economic development.  Haunted by my
mother's business scribblers, I have begun to mobilize a project around the 30
wedding dresses which are part of her collection.  I am organizing a one woman
show of my mother's work with this particular "genre" which will feed into a broader
piece of reserach on gender/feminity.  I have located the women whose dresses
were sewn by my mother and, in a few weeks, will interview them about the
creation and meaning of the dresses.  I will also interview my mother and
interrogate my own childhood memories.

I will also be collecting photographs and newspaper clippings which describe the
weddings themselves.  I envision an exhibition (and subsequently a book) which
would include all of these materials surrounded/contrasted by text from the
itnerviews and other literature which I may want to include.

I have had discussions with a museum network in Alberta about mounting the
exhibition.  Meanwhile I could use advice (as I am a novice) about getting this
together and keeping it on track.  Can people direct me to written (or other)
references which would help me out?  Or people I should talk to?  Any words of
wisdom?

Kathryn Church
Post Doctoral Fellow
Faculty of Social Work
University of Toronto
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