Threads of Our Community: A History of the Avenir Museum

Threads of Our Community: A History of the Avenir Museum is a virtual exhibition of the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising, created in part with funding from a CARES grant during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The concept for the exhibition was originally developed before the pandemic hit and planned to open with a physical exhibition in Fall 2020. Unable to host any events in physical spaces, the virtual exhibition then became an avenue for bringing humanities and education to the public. The exhibition is a collection of digitized items showcasing the growth Avenir Museum has undergone. The Avenir began as a small teaching collection in the 1950s and has since grown into a collection of approximately 25,000 historic clothing and textile artifacts, housed in a state-of-the-art museum facility. This digital collection consists of materials from the virtual exhibition dated 1986 to 2010 and including photographs, brochures, catalogs, newspaper articles, and photographic slides.