DAR Headquarters will be closed from March 16 to March 20. We will reopen on March 21. 

Sewn in America: Making, Meaning, Memory

SewingMarch 15, 2024 to December 31, 2024

Sewn objects surround us. They clothe us from birth, cover our bodies day and night, furnish our living spaces, line our coffins. For over 40,000 years humans have sewn by hand (and for a mere 180, by machine as well). Until recently, every woman and many men knew how to sew for utilitarian and often decorative purposes. Knowing a variety of techniques and stitches, and which to use for a given task, was key knowledge imparted in childhood and employed throughout a lifetime.
 
This groundbreaking exhibit will combine sewn items from all textile sections of the DAR Museum’s collections: clothing, household textiles, quilts, and needlework. It will examine the role sewing played both practically in American women’s lives, and in shaping gender roles, whether domestically or in professions from dressmaking and tailoring to factory work. Garments, quilts, and embroideries from the 18th century to today will be juxtaposed to show how women of diverse backgrounds have used their needles to express emotions and identity and as a force for benevolence and justice.

 

Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit for Independence

fightforfreedomOpens March 29, 2025

Travel Dates: 2026-2028

The Revolutionary War serves as a testament to the forging of the United States of America and the embodiment of ideas and principles pertaining to liberation and sovereignty. While often overshadowed, African Americans played a central role in attaining such values as realities in America. Their participation during the Revolutionary War serves as a perfect vignette to observe the long journey towards a unified and independent nation. The purpose of this exhibition is to highlight the creations, contributions, and legacies of African Americans as they fought for freedom during the midst of the American Revolution and beyond. At times the war was unified and inseparable. In contrast, other vignettes display people struggling to break free from oppression while their oppressors also wrestled with ideas of liberty.

While covering the Revolutionary period, Fighting for Freedom spans beyond those war years of the Revolution, as African Americans sought explicit realities of liberty through craft well into the 19th and early 20th centuries with the underpinning idea of African American craft as a catalyst for freedom-seeking which displays itself in a host of ways. This exhibition intends to encompass African American crafts of furniture, metals (silver), paintings, textiles, tools, and the assortment of other objects connected to African American craft.

A collaborative exhibition between the DAR Museum and the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive

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Upcoming Events

  • Esther Perel
    - 8:00 PM
  • Heilung
    - 8:00 PM
  • John Mellencamp
    - 8:00 PM
  • Saturday Morning Cartoons
  • Women’s History Costume Party
  • Crystal Bowl Sound Bath

Learn how DAR members selflessly and tirelessly dedicated themselves to the war relief effort of World War I

Find special initiative opportunities for every interest and every budget!