When I began working on the Rio Grande textiles exhibit, I had no title for the exhibit because as yet I knew virtually nothing about the topic. Although I had begun reading books and journal articles about the textiles, initially I learned the most from my first visit to the Millicent Rogers Museum and their exhibit “A Feast for the Eyes, Rio Grande Blankets from the Collection.” In this exhibit I saw in detail the reality of what was discussed in the books and in another exhibit I saw a European horizontal treadle loom like those used to weave these blankets.

Research materials

With this visual connection, my understanding quickly expanded as I continued to research. And the more I read, the more the political, economic, social, and cultural context became crucial to appreciating the role of the blankets in the expansion of Spanish culture throughout the American Southwest and the interactions with Mexico and Native Americans of the era.
I identified key areas of interest and focused research on these topics, which were later developed into several of the interpretive labels for the exhibit and also a visitor take-away sheet. As I researched, I was also developing a report on the textiles, which inadvertently turned into a full-blown research paper because there was so much information that helped to explain the significance of these textiles in the Hispanic culture of the time. I was truly fascinated. It was through all of this research that the title for the exhibit emerged: “Rio Grande Blankets: Hispanic History and Tradition.”

Object Label

Object labels are generally mounted adjacent to the objects in an exhibit and identify the object for the viewer. They usually include information such as: Artist or Maker and Year(s) of birth and death, the Title of the object and Date created, the Medium (material) from which the object was made, the Donor of the object (or the person from whom the object was purchased), and the Accession Number that identifies the object.
It is quite common to have no information on the weaver for Rio Grande textiles, so only two of the five object labels include the name of the artisan weaver, and we decided to eliminate “Unknown Artist” from the other object labels. We titled the objects “Rio Grande Blanket” because this provided more information about the objects than merely calling them textiles. We included the weaving technique with the title since the original concept for the exhibit was to showcase the two main weaving techniques of the blankets: double width and two widths seamed. And because it is most often impossible to know with certainty whether a dye is natural or synthetic, we simply used the word “dyes” as part of the medium description.

Object label

To get all of these details correct for each blanket, I combed through the donor and object files, as well as my notes from Mark Winter’s consultant visit. The labels went through several rounds of editing as Tawney and I reviewed and made the above-mentioned decisions on presentation. When the final label text was printed, I affixed the object labels adjacent to the blankets.