Materiality Made Visible

The Fashion Resource Center and the Textiles Resource Center are just two of the special collections at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. These two resource centers are hybrid research facilities embedded within academic departments, which maintain unique hands-on collections that support artistic practice and scholarship across campus. The Fashion Resource Center’s collection consists of more than 600 garments and 200 accessories that exemplify avant-garde designs, fabrics, and construction techniques by some of the most prominent designers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Textile Resource Center holds a collection of almost 400 objects from the historic and contemporary world of textiles. Each collection offers students the opportunity to explore new working methods and engage with notions of materiality and artistic production. This paper examines the process of providing greater accessibility to and discoverability of these materials in a manner that anticipates the needs of visual learners by reflecting the diverse and interdisciplinary approaches to art and design education that is core to the School’s mission. The effort to integrate these collections--both object-based and printed material--into the Library’s Digital Collections has been a close collaboration between faculty, special collections, and library staff. Through the dynamic working process, staff and faculty have created a digital collection that enhances access and understanding of the physical objects through a robust metadata schema that relies on a deep understanding of curricular priorities and pedagogical practices.