A 1950’s Traina-Norell gown to be auctioned by the Brooklyn Museum
Talk about cleaning out the closet.
Nearly 8,000 dresses, pants, undergarments, shoes and hats from the Brooklyn Museum’s renowned costume collection will go on the auction block in a series of sales beginning Nov. 4 and stretching over several years.
Buyers will have a chance to snatch up a pair of shoes with silver adornments from the 1600s, corsets from the 1800s and last-century dresses from designers including Halston, James Galanos, and Anthony Traina and Norman Norell.
Karen Augusta, whose Augusta Auctions company will hold the sales, says she is still unpacking the first truckloads of clothing from Brooklyn and was “blown away” by some three dozen pairs of 18th-century silk and brocade women’s shoes.
Augusta, a clothing and textile expert for the PBS program “Antiques Roadshow,” says she has never examined so many shoes from that period at once. The November auction will feature some of those shoes among the 300 to 400 pieces from the Brooklyn collection.
Included are designs by Bonnie Cashin and Claire McCardell, credited with creating a new American fashion style in the 1940s. “It was very well-designed clothing that wasn’t haute couture,” Augusta says.
The Brooklyn Museum is cashing in on its clothing after deciding last year to combine its costume collection with that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The 23,500-piece Brooklyn collection, which the museum started amassing in 1902, has been little seen by the public in recent years. Such collections are typically expensive to maintain and display because of the care required of the garments.
“They’ve put together really one of the stellar collections, especially of late 19th-century and 20th-century American designers,” says Harold Koda, the curator in charge of the Met’s Costume Institute. “It’s really remarkable.”
Koda says it has always been the intention of both museums to sell at least one-third of the Brooklyn collection. The garments for sale are mostly those considered redundant examples of a particular designer or period, and some items in poor condition.
He can’t estimate the proceeds of the auctions, but says the money will go to the Brooklyn Museum’s acquisitions fund. The Brooklyn museum, like others, has been struggling financially and earlier this year cut its staff by 10 percent through layoffs and buyouts.
The Met and the Brooklyn Museum will hold simultaneous shows this spring of pieces from the Brooklyn collection, with the Met’s annual Costume Institute Gala kicking off the exhibits.