NY Textile Exhibit Goes to Extremes
Technical textiles are on display through the end of October at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.
“Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance” features engineered fabrics and fibers created to meet the demands of a variety of apparel, architecture, aerospace, transportation, medical and environmental applications.
The exhibition, sponsored by Minneapolis-based retailer Target Corp., is divided into five categories representing five different fabric and fiber characteristics: stronger, lighter, faster, smarter and safer.
Items on display include an army uniform that monitors the vital signs of the wearer; woven and knitted grafts that can be used to replace human arteries after bypass surgery; a musical rope installation; and light switches made from pom-poms, tassels and fur. The show will also include a reproduction of the Wright brothers’ 1902 glider, modern-age space suits borrowed from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and a prototype of the Mars Lander airbag created by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
For more information about the exhibit, visit www.cooperhewitt.org, or call (212) 849-8400.
