Digital Costume Display

Costume is popular in museum exhibitions, but it requires a lot of preparation, careful handling, well-appointed space and special conditions. And it can’t even tolerate the light for very long – all good reasons to supplement traditional display with digital presentations. At the Royal Danish Collections, however, we have gone further, creating encounters unheard of in conventional exhibitions: turning the costume to see every detail and zooming in close enough to count threads and stitches. Kongedragter.dk (Royal costume) is an interactive presentation of 16 garments worn by the 16 Danish monarchs from King Frederik II (died 1588) to the reigning Queen Margrethe II. These pieces are world famous because of their history, precise dates, exquisite materials and tailoring, and because the collection contains, unusually, almost exclusively men’s clothing from the early 1600’s to today. Using 3D visualization, detailed descriptions and not least of all, games, this historic costume is brought as close to visitors as their own clothes. This ambitious project consists of many integrated layers, each targeting a specific segment, from children’s introductions to complex technical text for the museum professional. There are patterns for reconstructions, fancy dress forHalloween, as well as the cultural and political history in which each piece was made and worn. A series of delightful games exploits the dynamics between each king and his clothes. Collecting the games’ trophies encourages young (and older!) visitors to explore the entire site, discovering a remarkable time-travel of costume history from the Renaissance to today

Perfumed Textiles

As a museum professional, I work with memories. And nothing is more evocative than scent, which is both fragile and powerful. Perfumed textiles and costume are a standard part of every culture, yet few have been identified, and virtually none have been preserved. Perfuming was traditionally used to mask malodors from use or from production processes like tanning and dyeing, for ceremonial reasons, or simply to create a favorable impression of the wearer. Perfuming methods included using incense, laundry aids, sweet bags and fuming pans. Unintentional perfuming also occurred, of which we sometimes get a whiff in our museum collections. Years of research have shown that museums and archives hold the key to this forgotten, intangible art. Inventories, tailors’ bills, wardrobe lists, doctors’ accounts, custom duties and other historical sources provide reliable information about perfuming textiles. Originally begun as a reminder to conservators that they must also learn to recognize and preserve scented objects, this work constitutes not only a new discipline but also an immediately appealing, inspiring and thought-provoking aspect for people already knowledgeable about other areas of textiles. Working with a professional parfumeur has resulted in recreating a series of scents, so participants can experience the smell of Henry VIII’s perfumed shirts, Indian shawls redolent of patchouli, Cassanova’s handkerchief, the macassar oil left on hatbands and furniture, Japanese wedding kimonos, Paul Poiret’s gowns sprayed with the first designer perfume in 1920, and modern technology’s nano- and microcapsules permanently embedding scent in athletic socks, business suits and stockings

The transcription factor BELLRINGER modulates phyllotaxis by regulating the expression of a pectin methylesterase in Arabidopsis

Plant leaves and flowers are positioned along the stem in a regular pattern. This pattern, which is referred to as phyllotaxis, is generated through the precise emergence of lateral organs and is controlled by gradients of the plant hormone auxin. This pattern is actively maintained during stem growth through controlled cell proliferation and elongation. The formation of new organs is known to depend on changes in cell wall chemistry, in particular the demethylesterification of homogalacturonans, one of the main pectic components. Here we report a dual function for the homeodomain transcription factor BELLRINGER (BLR) in the establishment and maintenance of the phyllotactic pattern in Arabidopsis. BLR is required for the establishment of normal phyllotaxis through the exclusion of pectin methylesterase PME5 expression from the meristem dome and for the maintenance of phyllotaxis through the activation of PME5 in the elongating stem. These results provide new insights into the role of pectin demethylesterification in organ initiation and cell elongation and identify an important component of the regulation mechanism involved

A galactosyltransferase acting on arabinogalactan protein glycans is essential for embryo development in Arabidopsis

Arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs) are a complex family of cell-wall proteoglycans that are thought to play major roles in plant growth and development. Genetic approaches to studying AGP function have met limited success so far, presumably due to redundancy within the large gene families encoding AGP backbones. Here we used an alternative approach for genetic dissection of the role of AGPs in development by modifying their glycan side chains. We have identified an Arabidopsis glycosyltransferase of CAZY family GT31 (AtGALT31A) that galactosylates AGP side chains. A mutation in the AtGALT31A gene caused the arrest of embryo development at the globular stage. The presence of the transcript in the suspensor of globular-stage embryos is consistent with a role for AtGALT31A in progression of embryo development beyond the globular stage. The first observable defect in the mutant is perturbation of the formative asymmetric division of the hypophysis, indicating an essential role for AGP proteoglycans in either specification of the hypophysis or orientation of the asymmetric division plane

Tecidos no museu: argumentos para uma história das práticas curatoriais no Brasil

This paper forwards certain arguments related to the curatorial practices developed\ud around the fabrics that are now part of the collections maintained by the University of São\ud Paulo. The activities of collecting, documenting, conserving, displaying and transfering\ud collections were discussed on the basis of what would have been the determining\ud guidelines/values associated with the curatorial work of museums in the last centur