Current Exhibitions
Dressing the Abbey
THE ICONIC WARDROBE OF DOWNTON ABBEY™
FEBRUARY 9 – MAY 2, 2021
MEMBER PREVIEWS FEB 6, 7 & 8
Relive your favorite memories of the award-winning drama Downton Abbey™ at Dressing the Abbey. Featuring 35 costumes worn by the stars of the acclaimed series about British aristocrats and their servants set on a fictional country estate, the exhibition presents a fashion history of the period surrounding World War I, a period that changed the social fabric of Great Britain. A fine selection from the series’ wardrobe, reflects on the changing times through fashion from 1912 to the mid-1920s.
Dressing the Abbey Exhibition Info
Spinning a Yarn
February 9 – June 20, 2021
This exhibition is the first in our Social Fabric Series and complements Dressing the Abbey. It weaves together personal histories and period clothing to interpret the social fabric of the Campbell family's era (late 19th and early 20th centuries). Follow the threads connecting the Campbells and their contemporaries, unravel the roles that clothing plays in our collective consciousness, and put a spin on individual stories through exceptional examples from the MAC's costume collection. On display in Campbell House.
Embroidered Waterlily Dress, c1900. Gift of Clarice Vermillion, 1984, 2988.1
Reclaiming Culture: The Tlingit and Haida Tribes of Alaska Repatriation
FEBRUARY 9 – MAY 2, 2021
MEMBER PREVIEW FEB 6, 7 & 8
After several years of communication between the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, a tribally appointed Tlingit delegation traveled to Spokane in 2018 to review the museum’s American Indian collection.
The Tlingit delegation identified 16 items of cultural significance in the MAC collection that qualified for repatriation under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The MAC has been granted rare permission from Tlingit representatives to share many of these artifacts prior to their return to the Tlingit homeland.
Tlingit Clan Leader Hat, Cedar, abalone shell, paint. Gift of Agnes McDonald, 1919, 175.49
Witness to Wartime: The Painted Diary of Takuichi Fujii
January 23 – May 16, 2021
Takuichi Fujii was fifty years old when war broke out between the United States and Japan. In a climate of increasing fear and racist propaganda, he became one of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast forced to leave their homes and live in geographically isolated incarceration camps.
Fujii began an illustrated diary that spans the years from his forced removal in May 1942 through his internment in southern Idaho, which ended in October 1945. In nearly 250 ink drawings ranging from public to intimate views, the diary depicts detailed images of the camps, and the inmates’ daily routines and pastimes. He also produced over 130 watercolors that reiterate and expand upon the diary as well as several oil paintings and sculptures.
Self Portrait, 1935
Witness to Wartime: The Painted Diary of Takuichi Fujii Exhibition Info
Bomber Boys: Portraits from the Front
October 4, 2020 – May 23, 2021
Featuring a series of candid portraits reproduced from a secret stash of World War II images, ephemera, and a diary from 1945, the exhibition highlights the combat, crew, and camp life of the 445th bomb squadron of the 12th Army Air Corps stationed on Corsica and in Italy (the same outfit featured in Catch-22.)
Bomber Boys: Portraits from the Front Exhibition Info
American Inheritance: Unpacking World War II
October 10, 2020 – September 5, 2021
Seventy-five years after the fighting stopped, evidence of the world’s deadliest global conflict can still be found in almost every home, community and aspect of American life. WWII legacies survive in suburban attics, memorialized in public spaces and the ways in which Americans view the world itself. Over the course of their lives, the men, women and children who experienced World War II first-hand passed down the triumphs and terrors that make up our American Inheritance. The MAC presents American Inheritance: Unpacking World War II, an exhibition of useable history that figuratively “unpacks” the legacy of an American generation’s response to crisis.
Lt. Marion Blanc. Gift of Madilane A. Perry, in Memory of Her Mother, Marion Blanc, 2012. 4271.3