About the Museum
Welcome
The LSU Textile & Costume Museum preserves a vital part of history and promotes the understanding and enjoyment of diverse textile traditions. It promotes conservation, research, teaching, and public service. Research includes studies of the technical, aesthetic, historic, and socio-cultural significance of textiles and apparel. Exhibitions interpret the findings of such research to the University community and the public alike.
The museum is a part of the LSU Department of Textiles, Apparel Design, and Merchandising. It had its beginnings in the 1930s as a teaching collection and has since expanded to include conservation, research, and public exhibition facilities. Today the Museum has become Louisiana’s pre-eminent institution for the preservation, collection, and research of textile artifacts. It is one of the component collections of the Louisiana State Museum of Natural History at Louisiana State University.
Mission Statement:
The LSU Textile & Costume Museum (TCM)'s primary mission is to preserve fashion and textile artifacts according to four priorities: American fashion, woman fashion designers, LSU histories, and Louisiana histories. TCM also endeavors to collect and curate from an inclusive and intersectional perspective to better represent diverse cultural and social histories. We support and enrich the Department of Textiles, Apparel Design & Merchandising’s (TAM) academic programs and the greater LSU community. As the only R1 institution in the southeast offering M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in historical/cultural aspects of dress, we train future academics, researchers, and museum professionals to pursue engaging careers related to fashion and textiles' comprehensive history and culture. Importantly, TCM is a conduit connecting students, faculty, staff, alums, and other constituents across the state and country through engaging exhibitions, research, catalog dissemination, and a robust commitment to supporting Louisiana-based institutions with loans from our collection.
Hours
Weekdays: 11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Weekends: The first Sunday* of each month from 2:00-4:00 pm
*excludes holiday weekends
Phone: 225-578-1087
E-mail: textile@lsu.edu
Facilities
Collection Storage
Our temperature—and humidity-controlled collection storage space was established in 1991 with support from the Board of Regents. Multiple expansions increased the storage facility to approximately 1100 square feet. In 2023, TCM received another Board of Regent’s grant, adding thirteen additional storage cabinets and a backup HVAC system. Compact storage for hanging and flat garments and textiles houses a wide range of artifacts. Our storage allows for the long-term preservation of the museum’s holdings. It is the only museum storage space of its kind dedicated to textiles and fashion preservation in the state of Louisiana.
Exhibition Space
The LSU Textile & Costume Museum boasts a 1200-square-foot gallery renovated and opened in 2021. It is a bright and interactive learning space for guests to explore the history of fashion and textiles. The gallery is the only one in the state dedicated to the exhibition of fashion and textiles. We offer rotating exhibitions on a regular basis.
Meet the Staff
Michael Mamp
Director and Curator LSU Textile and Costume Museum
Associate Professor
141 Human Ecology Building
225-578-1087
mmamp@lsu.edu
Morgan Stryznski
Graduate Assistant
Katherine Bankhead
Graduate Assistant
Martha Rigney
Undergraduate Student Worker
Olivia Ryland
Undergraduate Student Worker
In the News
The Textile Museum Shines!
Louisiana: The State We're In
LSWI is Louisiana's only statewide news magazine. The program airs Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 4:30 p.m. on the six-station LPB network that includes stations in Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Monroe, and Shreveport. This award-winning show combines in-depth coverage about the important issues in the state along with expert analysis.
Geoffrey Beene, a native of Haynesville, LA, was a world-famous fashion designer who built a label rooted in motifs from his Southern upbringing. The Louisiana Textile and Costume Museum has one of the largest collections of Geoffrey Beene’s garments in the nation, thanks to a generous donation from one of the fashion designer’s devotees. In this segment, LPB’s Karen LeBlanc takes us on a tour of Geoffrey Beene’s garments that graced fashion magazine covers and international catwalks. We also go behind the scenes to look at the museum’s vast fashion archive, a resource for LSU students studying fashion design and textile history.
The Coming Home: Geoffrey Beene Exhibition have been featured several times over the last year.
A Hidden Gem: The LSU Textile and Costume Museum and its First Lady collection
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The story of human history can be found within the seams of the clothes we wear, according to the director and curator of the LSU Textile and Costume Museum Michael Mamp.
“Oftentimes those clothes that we choose tell stories about us, about the environments in which we wear those clothes and serve as a material record, a material culture of our history,” said Mamp.
He should know. He oversees a collection of more than 10,000 artifacts tucked away inside the Human Ecology building on LSU’s campus. The oldest artifact, he said, dates back thousands of years to prehistoric Louisiana. Their most recent is from 2022.
2024 SEMC Exhibition Award
2024 SEMC Exhibition Award
The LSU Textile & Costume Museum was awarded the 2024 Southeastern Museums Conference Silver Award (2nd Place in the under $10,000 budget category) for the exhibition Women Fashioning Women. The SEMC Exhibition Competition showcases the best in the profession and provides benchmarks for regional exhibition efforts in southeastern museums.