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Globalization is one of the most pervasive and important processes affecting humankind today. With increasing speed, people, things, and ideas move across vast landscapes, transforming them, and us, in the process.
One of the most omnipresent and noticeable things in global circulation today is cloth, and one of the most critical arenas for global contest is textile production and distribution. Textiles enfold us from the day we are born until the day we die. Made into clothing, textiles document our physical growth, mark the seasons of our lives, and serve as visible markers of our identity and culture. For millennia, we, as human beings, have woven textiles and manipulated cloth to communicate political messages, symbolic power, spirituality, and class relations.
Warp Speeds draws on the textile collections of the Haffenreffer Museum to weave narratives that reveal the historical precedents of globalization, as well as the rapid intercultural exchange that is a hallmark of contemporary globalization.
Bringing together pieces from regions as distant from one another as Nigeria, Laos, the United States, and the Andes, Warp Speeds exposes in particular how globalization is complicated by indigenous ideologies and practices. For millennia, societies have collaborated and collided with others economically and culturally via expansive trades in textiles. Worldwide, people have incorporated cloth made distantly into their own lives, transforming its elements and making it sensible in newly creative, yet still local, contexts. And today, the warps and wefts of globalization are woven at ever-increasing speed.
ABOUT WARP SPEEDS
Like most exhibitions produced by the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Warp Speeds is co-curated by undergraduate and graduate students under the guidance of Museum staff and Anthropology Department faculty. In the last three years, three anthropology seminars, drawing students from six departments, discussed exhibitions on campus and ways to conceptualize and implement an exhibition drawing on the Museum's extensive textile holdings in the context of globalization. A design, conservation, and installation team mounted the exhibition. We thank them all.
Brown University Students: Evan Aird, Jamieson Bunn, Jennifer DiCola, Lisa Dietz, Megan Fischer, Lauren Hinkson, Liz Hoover, Jessica Johnson, Adam Katz, Honor Keeler, Jennifer Lane, Mireya Loza, Kara Mandell, Lakshmi Mohandas, John Petrillo, Marisela Ramos, Christine Reiser, Julia Rogawski, Jessica Shapiro, Candace Toth, Thomas Urban.
Museum and Faculty Advisors, Design and Installation, and Consultants: Shepard Krech III and Kevin P. Smith, seminar and exhibition leaders; Rip Gerry, head of design and installation; Thierry Gentis, registrar and associate curator; Claire Grace and Patricia Symonds, curatorial consultants; Alexandra Allardt, Monique Chaffa, Sharon Hayden, Elizabeth Hoover, Elizabeth Johnson, and Angela McMillan, conservation; Nathaniel Clapp, C. A. Cooke, Adam Katz, Rodney Pacheco, Jennifer Trunzo, and Thomas Urban, preparation and installation; Tracey Poole, public relations; Patsy Sanford and Marion Wingfield, programs and education; and Marilyn Seymour, Kathy Luke, Rayne Baer, and Nancy Peck, administration.
For their generous financial support, donations, or loans of objects, we thank:
Anonymous
Leslie and Samson Ashamu
William Brill
Kim Clark
Paul A. Cohen
Sally Hill Cooper
Charles Cooper
Daniel Corley
Elizabeth Beach
Norman Brachfeld
Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Burnett
William J. Conklin
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Spink Davis
William Deneen
Barnet and Jean Fain
Alison Collins Fay
Walter and Barbara Feldman
Friends of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology
Andrew Fine
Robert Galkin
David Gregg
Virginia Gregg
David and Susan Haffenreffer
Peter and Mallory Haffenreffer
Haffenreffer Family Fund
Barbara A. Hail
Dwight B. and Anna Cooper Heath
William and Lorraine Hendrickson
Roger Hirschland
James and Alice Houston
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Katz
Peter and Anita Klaus
Sol and Jo Levitt
Burton and Junis Marcus
Pamela Meyer
William C. Mithoefer and Renee-Paule Moyencourt
H. Raymond Mottshaw
Russell Newton
Martin Paul
Paul Sapir
Savers
Dr. and Mrs. Melvin Scharfman
Louis Slavitz
Patricia V. Symonds
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