Exhibitions // Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection

MHCTC develops exhibitions and programs with campus and community museums, departments and institutions to encourage use of Collection artifacts. Annual exhibitions in the Abigail and Nicholas Filippello Exhibition Showcase in Gwynn Hall include the TAM Student Showcase for TAM‘s spring Advisory Board and summer and fall exhibits of the Curator’s choice.

Visitors are welcome to view the current exhibit in Gwynn Hall Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.–6 p.m. in accordance with the University calendar.

CURRENT EXHIBIT

Ginger Rogers: Dressed to Impress

Location: State Historical Society of Missouri’s Center for Missouri Studies
Dates of Exhibition: March 2 – August 31, 2024

Legendary Academy-Award winning performer and Missouri native Ginger Rogers (1911-1995) maintained one of the longest successful – and stylish – careers in entertainment that spanned over six decades from the 1920s to 1984, revolutionizing the Hollywood musical in a legendary partnership with Fred Astaire and successfully transitioning across film, television, stage, and radio. Throughout her career, Rogers used clothing to strategically craft her own unique persona that became a visually-recognized trademark of her success. The MHCTC celebrates this career and a new collection of Rogers costume and archives in an exhibition that explores Rogers’ understanding of the complex relationship between dress, the body and the viewer experience. The first of its kind to apply these elements of humanities and design scholarship to Rogers’ costumes, the exhibition “Ginger Rogers: Dressed to Impress” provides a rare glimpse of Rogers’ clothing and accessories from later stages of her career and highlights connections to earlier films such as Top Hat from 1935, Flying Down to Rio from 1933, and more! Rogers’ costume and unique sense of style also impressed and inspired undergraduate students in the Department of Textile and Apparel Management at the University of Missouri whose designs are included in both physical and virtual exhibitions.