Rama V in Western dress
Thai Batik
Louise Coffey-Webb
Earlier this year the Ruskin Art Club and the Los Angeles art and museum world suddenly lost an outstanding teacher, curator, arts coordinator, family member and dear friend and colleague with the sudden passing of Louise Coffey-Webb. This program will begin with a tribute to Louise and the career she built in California after leaving England to make LA and then Culver City her home. This will be followed by a presentation on the King of Siam’s travels in Singapore and Java in 1871, 1896, and 1901 and the batik collection he made. That 300-piece collection was re-discovered in 2009 in the inner chambers of the Grand Palace in Bangkok by the speaker and a team from the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles (QSMT) at the Palace. Through historic photos of the royal entourage and highlights of rare and important batiks the remarkable story will come to life.
Dale Carolyn Gluckman, an independent curator and museum consultant specializing in textiles and dress. After a distinguished career as a curator of costumes and textiles at LACMA, she left in 2005 and became a senior consultant to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok. Dale has curated over 30 exhibitions as well as lectured and published widely on textiles and dress from East Asia to the US and Europe. Among her many credits are lead curator of the award-winning 1992 LACMA exhibition and publication When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan. Her latest exhibition, A Royal Treasure: The Javanese Batik Collection of King Chulalongkorn of Siam, is accompanied by a fully illustrated 320-page catalogue.