Inherent Vice, or: How I learned to stop worrying and love shattered silk

Fashion and textile collections are deeply affected by inherent vice, consisting of fragile objects never meant to last indefinitely. Likewise, museum storage often suffers from inherent faults rooted in biased ideologies. With these overlapping complexities in mind, conservation and curatorial staff from the Rhode Island School of Design Museum organized an interdisciplinary, year-long project entitled Inherent Vice, encompassing gallery exhibitions, coursework, and artistic collaborations designed to engage students and the public with the nuances of textile deterioration. The resulting project is a case study of how conservators leveraged preservation work, often isolated behind closed doors, to encourage collaborative engagement. The success of this project relied on multiple factors: willingness to collaborate without a predefined end goal, a focus on non-linear and abstract outcomes, and comfort with a fluid concept of what a conservator’s role is and should be. Our collaborative work highlighted how teaching about conservation in non-traditional arenas can build relationships and enrich creative practice beyond the walls of a museum. It allowed us to explore how innovative approaches to deterioration – and accepting that things fall apart in the first place – can be a generative, ethical part of textile conservation practice.