Thrift Style: Using Our Past to Improve Our Present Lecture by Curator Marla Day

Park City Museum will host a lecture called Thrift Style: Using Our Past to Improve Our Present given by curator Marla Day on Wednesday, June 28th from 5-6 p.m. held at the Park City Museum Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive.  The Thrift Style exhibition will be on display at the Park City Museum from May 15th to August 16th.  For more information go to www.parkcityhistory.org.

When you look around your home, what could you repurpose and restyle to meet a need? ‘Making something from nothing’ is a saying that can spark ingenuity. This program explores the history of feed sacks, the reuse of a simple piece of leftover fabric, and how homemakers used what was available to them to meet the needs of their families and how that history can inspire us today.  A message that can resonate with consumers during our current economic climate.

Marla Day received her B.S. and M.S. in Apparel and Textiles from Kansas State University. She has been curator of the university’s Historic Costume and Textile Museum for much of her career, as well as being a K-State Research and Extension associate in textiles. She has been responsible for numerous curated exhibits including Mantles for Women: Rites of Passage; Nelly Don: Dresses that Worked for Women; Woven wonders: A Cross-Section of American History; and the exhibit catalog Life Passages: Women, Dress, and Culture. She was awarded the NEH Scholarship in both 2007 and 2008 from the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies and Certification in Museum Management.

Marla currently serves on several community boards including the Sunset Zoo Conservation Trust, the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art, the Riley County Historical Museum Board of Directors, and is Vice-President of the Kansas Museum Association.

Day has traveled the country and consulted for the Smithsonian’s Save Our Treasures Program for the last several years and continues to advise the public on methods to preserve the history of their textile keepsakes through public programs. She is currently serving her second year with the Humanities Kansas Speaker’s Bureau sharing the history of Nelly Don and the Donnelly Garment Company once located in Kansas City.