Traveling Exhibitions

Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design

The traveling exhibition Nature’s Blueprints: Biomimicry in Art and Design brings together art and design with environmental science using both scientific and artistic objects, as well as interactive learning stations. The exhibition is an adaptation of the High Desert Museum’s Innovation Lab: Design Inspired by Nature.

Thrift Style

Thrift Style explores the reuse of feed sacks to make clothing and other household objects and illuminates how the “upcycling” of these bags mutually benefitted twentieth-century consumers and businesses. With forty-one works from patterns to garments, it serves as an example of past ingenuity that can inform today’s efforts towards sustainability.

Courting Style: Women’s Tennis Fashion

Drawn for the collections at the Museum of The International Tennis Hall of Fame, Courting Style: Women’s Tennis Fashion explores the intersection of tennis and fashion.

Art of the Aloha Shirt: Keoni of Hawaii, 1938–51

Explore the history, artistry, and production of Hawaii’s enduring fashion statement, the Aloha Shirt. This exhibition of sixty objects, including original textile artwork, production sketches and swatches, advertisements, and vintage shirts tells the story of an early innovator, John “Keoni” Meigs, in an industry that has left an indelible mark on fashion in the United States and the world.

Material Pulses: Seven Viewpoints

This exhibition features quilts, mixed media, and installation work. Quilts of up to 101 inches high will be featured, for dramatic scale of an art form that is often relegated to its functional qualities. The artists investigate color, pattern, and size through traditional and experimental quilt-making applications.

Cloth as Community: Hmong Textiles in America

The story of Hmong textile production told in this exhibition reflects the radical upheaval in the external environment that Hmong refugees experienced. It tracks the evolution of Hmong textiles from ceremonial works to those created for commerce.

Vibrant Bounty: Chinese Folk Art from the Shaanxi Region

This exhibition invites visitors on a journey through Shaanxi Province, one of the cradles of Chinese civilization. Both the art and the objects featured in this exhibition introduce us to a region of China, which, like the American Midwest, is dominated by agriculture and populated with working people.

Work, Fight, Give: American Relief Posters of WWII

Offering a wide-ranging collection of original relief posters and memorabilia, this is the first exhibition to challenge our traditional memory of World War II, putting relief efforts at the forefront through an array of visually exciting poster art, photographs, banners, and programs issued by the various relief agencies and by the National War Fund.

Wandering Spirit: African Wax Prints

This exhibition explores the rich history and evolution of African Wax Prints. From its origins in Java and Dutch colonialism to modern-day production in China, these fabrics now reflect a variety of cultural touch points throughout Africa.