Curator of the African collection of the Museum fur Volkerkunde (Ethnology) Wien-Kunsthistorisches Museum in Austria, Barbara Plankensteiner has again successfully collaborated with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments to stage an exhibition - African Lace: A history of Trade, Creativity and Fashion in Nigeria. The exhibition opened in Vienna, Austria on October 22, 2010.
In 2007, Plankensteiner collaborated with the NCMM and the Oba of Benin to curate the exhibition, ‘Benin - Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria’; which toured Europe and America for over a year.
Austro-Nigerian fabric
The African Lace exhibition has been made possible by the support of the Austrian Embroidery Industry. As exaggeratedly stated in the exhibition book, “African lace denotes brightly coloured industrially embroidered textiles that define the image of Nigeria worldwide.” Factually though, “the specific designs manufactured for the West African market go back to the early 1960s when commercial relations with the newly independent state of Nigeria began. Since then, African lace has become extremely popular in Nigeria and the resulting clothes have been adopted as traditional dress.”
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