The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents the North American debut of RODARTE: Fra Angelico Collection, on view December 17, 2011–February 5, 2012, a promised gift to the museum’s renowned Costume and Textiles Department. The Spring|Summer 2012 couture collection features a group of extraordinary gowns by acclaimed American designers, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, inspired by frescoes painted by the early Italian Renaissance artist, Fra Angelico (c. 1350–1455). The Fra Angelico Collection was unveiled as a site-specific installation at Pitti Immagine in Florence, Italy in June 2011. At LACMA, the Rodarte gowns will be on view in the museum’s Italian Renaissance gallery, surrounded by classic Renaissance artworks.
Rodarte, Cantaloupe pleated silk, draped silk Georgette, and Taffeta gown with gold ray belt. Photo ©2011 Museum Associates/LACMA.
”These gowns are the first works by Rodarte to enter the museum’s permanent holdings, and we are pleased to present this outstanding collection,” said Sharon S. Takeda, Senior Curator and Head of the Costume and Textiles Department.
“We are so honored that our Fra Angelico Collection from Pitti Immagine in Florence has come to LACMA, and to see it installed amongst the museum’s masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance is an incomparable experience for us,” said Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte.
Fra Angelico Collection at LACMA
The collection is inspired by Italian art, specifically the Renaissance frescoes in the monastery of San Marco by Fra Angelico in Florence, Italy, as well as the Baroque sculpture, Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) in Rome. At LACMA, Rodarte’s Fra Angelico Collection installation will create a unique and complementary relationship with the Florentine art in LACMA’s collection. Silk fabrics are draped and pleated to define form and texture to the Fra Angelico Collection gowns in colors that can be seen in the surrounding artworks on display in the museum’s Italian Renaissance gallery. One large painting, Christ on the Cross with Saints Vincent Ferrer, John the Baptist, Mark, and Antoninus (c. 1491-95), by the Master of the Fiesole Epiphany (active c. 1480-1500), serves as an exquisite reference for the installation of the gowns.
Appropriately enough, the painting, a gift of the Ahmanson Foundation, was commissioned by the silk weavers’ guild of Florence for their altar in San Marco.
Rodarte’s signature dressmaking techniques and sculptural details can be seen in each gown in the Fra Angelico Collection. Silk fabrics (including chiffon, crepe, gauze, lamé, organza, satin, and taffeta) are draped and manipulated to give form, texture, and tonal variety to the color palette influenced by Fra Angelico’s frescoes. The gowns are customized utilizing a variety of materials such as feathers, SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS, sequins, and hand-molded Easter lilies. Hand-forged gold metallic accessories, such as a headpiece, breastplate, and belts informed by elements in Bernini’s sculptures, dramatically complete the look of several gowns.
LACMA’s Costume and Textiles Collection
The Fra Angelico Collection will enter LACMA’s Costume and Textiles Department, which houses over twenty-five thousand objects, representing more than one hundred cultures and two thousand years of human creativity in the textile arts.Particularly well-represented are European textiles, fashionable dress, and accessories including the museum’s groundbreaking acquisition of more than 1,000 works that was highlighted in the recent exhibition Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915, which will be travelling to the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin and the Musée de la Mode et du Textile/Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
About Rodarte
Kate and Laura Mulleavy received their bachelor’s degrees in liberal arts from UC Berkeley in 2001. Following their graduations, they returned to Los Angeles and launched Rodarte in 2005. In November 2008, Rodarte received the Swiss Textiles Award, becoming the first American designers and the first women to receive the award. Since then, Kate and Laura have won numerous awards and accolades, including the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year in 2009, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion, and the 2010 National Arts Award from Americans for the Arts, becoming the first fashion designers to receive the honor. In 2011, they were nominated for best costume design at the 16th Annual Critics’ Choice Movie Awards for their work in Black Swan. Earlier this year, Rodarte’s first west coast exhibition, Rodarte: States of Matter, was on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Rodarte’s works are featured in the permanent collections of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Museum at FIT in New York City. – lacma.org