Melinda Watt
Melinda Watt leads the Art Institute’s Textiles department as Chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator, a role she assumed upon joining the museum in 2018. She is curator of Gio Swaby: Fresh Up, opening in April 2023, and recently served as curator for the 2021–2 exhibition Morris & Co.: The Business of Beauty and 2022’s Fabricating Fashion: Textiles for Dress, 1700–1825.
Before joining the Art Institute, Watt was curator of European textiles and supervising curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She was a curator and author for the museum-wide collaborative exhibition and publication Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800 (2013-14), and in 2008 she received the R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award for co-authoring and co-editing English Embroidery from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1580–1700: ‘Twixt Art and Nature.
Melinda holds a master of arts in costume studies from New York University.
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The Alchemy of Weaving
Learn how contemporary textile artists from across the globe have advanced the ancient and seemingly magical practice of turning thread into cloth.
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Another Side to Gio Swaby
Celebrations of “personal style, vulnerability, strength, beauty, individuality, and imperfections,” Swaby’s life-sized textile portraits also stem from her relationships with her subjects, including her three older sisters.
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Muslin Like “Woven Air”: Indian Textiles in Fabricating Fashion
Fine Indian textiles became sought-after commodities in the 1700s, impacting fashions from France to Japan.
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May Morris: Designer and Advocate
As head of the embroidery studio at Morris & Co., May Morris carried on a family legacy—while forging her own as a designer and activist.
Melinda Watt