Jessica Nelson, Curatorial Assistant


As you can see in the timelapse video above, Team Textile quickly became a well oiled machine, each with our own roles, but helping each other as needed to complete this project and to safely handle these fragile collections.

During the main workflow of the project, I maintained the list of textiles to be photographed, tracking our progress. From the pile of textiles waiting for photography each day, I’d select the next object to unroll and open its wrappings. It was so fun to get that first glimpse of each textile as it unfurled! On larger objects, Jennie and I assisted Juan in laying out and manipulating the textiles for photography.

While objects were being photographed, I’d refer back to the textile photography list and provide that information to both Juan and Jennie (Juan for naming the photo files, and Jennie for filling out the Condition Reporting form). I also cross-referenced the list against the information in our database, flagging missing data. For those pieces, I then updated the records in our database to include the missing measurements, materials, and more as each piece lay out on the table. Once Juan finished with the photography of each object, we’d slide it across the table to Jennie for condition reporting, and I’d open up the next textile bundle.