Prefigured
Fashion and Exhibition-making
Will be published approx. on 1. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-1-917651-74-5 (ISBN)
Description
Prefigured: Fashion and Exhibition-making examines how fashion exhibitions are conceived and constructed, drawing on nearly three decades of work by Judith Clark, one of the curators who helped define the field. Organised around the core elements of exhibition-making - reference, context, mannequins, narrative devices, and the spatial choreography of objects and viewers - the book reveals the idiosyncratic thinking behind Clark's exhibitions. For Clark, the exhibition is a narrative environment: a space where garments, archives, and spatial design open new ways of seeing fashion.
In the late 1990s, Clark opened an experimental gallery dedicated to fashion in London, the first of its kind, at a moment when the discipline was only beginning to take shape. Since then she has created influential exhibitions for institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, ModeMuseum Antwerp, Palazzo Pitti, La Triennale Milano, and the Barbican, helping to transform how fashion is displayed, interpreted, and discussed in museums worldwide.
In the late 1990s, Clark opened an experimental gallery dedicated to fashion in London, the first of its kind, at a moment when the discipline was only beginning to take shape. Since then she has created influential exhibitions for institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, ModeMuseum Antwerp, Palazzo Pitti, La Triennale Milano, and the Barbican, helping to transform how fashion is displayed, interpreted, and discussed in museums worldwide.
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Person
Judith Clark (b. 1967) is a London-based curator and scholar. She is Professor of Fashion and Museology at University of the Arts, London, and co-founder of the Centre for Fashion Curation. Since the late 1990s she has curated exhibitions for institutions including the Victoria and Albert Museum, ModeMuseum Antwerp, Palazzo Pitti, Palais de Tokyo, La Triennale Milano, and the Barbican, as well as projects with fashion houses including Louis Vuitton and Lanvin. She is the co-author of Exhibiting Fashion: Before and After 1971 (2014) and is currently Visiting Curator at the Warburg Institute.