If you aren't already registered to attend the conference's First Nations Art & Culture tour on Monday April 2nd, please consider joining us from 9:15am-6:00pm for the Fashion, Costume, Textiles Tour!

First stop: National Ballet of Canada Walter Carsen Centre

The Walter Carsen Centre is in King's Landing condominium designed by Arthur Erickson on the Toronto waterfront. The lower levels house the headquarters of the National Ballet of Canada and the ballet's rehearsal space. This behind-the-scenes tour includes visits to the Archives and Eric Bruhn library, costume archives, shoe room and wardrobe workshop.

Second stop: Bata Shoe Museum

The Bata Shoe Museum, housed in Raymond Moriyama’s award winning “shoebox”, is a collection of over 10,000 shoes, illustrating the history of the style and function of footwear. The exhibitions currently on display are: The Roaring Twenties; Art in Shoes-Shoes in Art; Beauty, Identity, Pride: NativeNorth American Footwear; All About Shoes: Footwear Throughout the Ages.

Third stop: Royal Ontario Museum Textile Department

Featured exhibit: Riotous Colour, Daring Patterns: Fashions + Textiles 18th to 21st Centuries

This dazzling display features over 120 items from around the world, drawn from the ROM’s extensive textile and costume collection, many of which are on display for the first time. A look at how designers and artists, from Dame VivienneWestwood and Jean Paul Gaultier to Pablo Picasso, have applied their work to printed furnishing and fashion textiles, with often witty, ironic and political outcomes.

Sarah Fee

Associate Curator, Eastern Hemisphere

Anu Livandi

Assistant Curator, Textiles and Costumes

Both curators will be on hand to show us some treasures in the workshop and conservation lab.

And our Final Stop: The Textile Museum of Canada

With almost 13,000 objects representing more than 200 countries and regions and 2,000 years of human history, the TMC is uniquely positioned to speak to cultures and identities in a global context. The Museum offers a broad variety of exhibitions based on its permanent collection and the contemporary work of Canadian and international artists.

Portable Mosques: The Sacred Space of the Prayer Rug: Tour will be lead by the curator, Natalia Nekrassova. An important element of worship within the Islamic world, the prayer rug, is apowerful expression of world view; integrating local aesthetics and materials as well as textile practices shared across centuries and generations of weavers. This exhibition features 30 prayer rugs created during the early 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Textile Museum of Canada is currently featuring Dare to Wear Love, the first exhibition devoted to the celebrated work of top Canadian fashion designers created to raise awareness and funds for the AIDS/HIV pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. Presented by the Textile Museum of Canada in collaboration with Hoax Couture and the Stephen Lewis Foundation, Dare to Wear Love not only showcases the vibrancy of contemporary Canadian design, but the long-standing connection between the fashion community and grassroots activism.

To register, please visit the tour listing on SCHED via the conference website. Don't delay, register today!