Japanese Propaganda Textiles Focus of Florida Tech’s March 19 Lecture at Ruth Funk Center
By Adam Lowenstein, FIT News Bureau // March 18, 2019
Friends of Textiles Event Features Ringling Museum’s Asian Art Curator
BREVARD COUNTY • MELBOURNE, FLORIDA – Florida Tech’s Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts will present “Bunnies, Bombs and Battleships: Decoding the Imagery and Aesthetics of Japanese Propaganda Textiles,” on Tuesday, March 19, for the spring Friends of Textiles Lecture series.
The lecture will be presented by Rhiannon Paget, curator of Asian art at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. It will be held in the Digital Scholarship Lab on the second floor of the university’s Evans Library starting with a reception at 5:15 p.m. The lecture will begin at 6 p.m.
Paget will explore themes displayed in the Funk Center’s current exhibition, Designed to Mobilize: Propaganda Kimono 1920-1945.
While the use of clothing to convey social and political messages is universal, Japanese propaganda textiles are remarkable for a number of reasons, including the high quality of their production, the direct, graphic nature of the designs, and that so many of them were made for children.
Incorporating motifs and stylistic elements from popular culture, modernism and folk traditions, the objects in Designed to Mobilize demonstrate the sophisticated, and often unsettling, visual language of Japanese propaganda textiles.
At the Ringling Museum, Paget oversees Asian art exhibitions and collections, including publications, collection development and research for the Center for Asian Art, which opened at the museum in May 2016.
Prior to joining the Ringling, Paget held the position of Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Japanese Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
The lecture is free for Friends of Textiles members and Florida Tech students, faculty and staff, and $10 per person for the general public.
Reservations are not necessary but may be made HERE. Prospective guests may also call the Funk Center at 321-674-6129 or email textiles@fit.edu for more information.
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