One day last winter, I noticed this interesting exhibit/display in the windows of Macy’s Department Store. These images grabbed me immediately: The drawings and posters of Josephine Baker as a fashion icon, and the mannequins, with their expressive hand gestures, and the colorful printed text, of (real? and) imagined “Baker-isms”
“Maman” Josephine Beyonce you can have my costume
No, I have no regrets A certain smile! Ah. Those Bananas! Me, a diva?
All of this imagery is meant to help us in ”Rediscovering Josephine Baker” during Black History Month. We are also to meant to “discover” the great items on sale at Macy’s.
Like Betsey Johnson Handbags on [Floor] 1.
What can we make of this as an archival practice? I think the use of images, original posters, and fashion drawings “on loan from the Jean Claude Baker Foundation and the Jean Rennert Collection,” is a traditional museum practice. But paired with the mannequins advertising the latest fashions on sale in the store, and the colorful fictional utterances, the Baker archive changes from a document of the past into an image of contemporary urban sophistication. But not without raising some disturbing issues… (more…)
