history thereof
This Museum has been a work in progress for almost a hundred years. First as a dream in 1914 with some space at the Brooklyn Museum and then in a permanent residence at F.I.T. in the 1960's. When fashion historian Valerie Steele took over in 1993 she greatly influenced the direction of the Museum and continues to initiate growth and innovative exhibition.
"Edward C. Blum, President of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, together with Morris D.C. Crawford, Director of Research of Fairchild Publications, founded the Design Laboratory at the Brooklyn Museum in 1914. Blum and Crawford supplemented the Museum’s already vast collection of textiles and costumes with new acquisitions, and established a creative environment where dressmakers had access to a wide variety of material.
In 1948, shortly after Blum’s death, a plan was developed for outfitting the collection with a complex of official study rooms at the Brooklyn Museum, which was named the Edward C. Blum Design Laboratory in honor of its founder. The plans came to fruition in part with the contributions of Federated Department Stores, Inc. It was only in the 1960s, however, that the Design Laboratory’s growing collections found a permanent home at the newly-built Shirley Goodman Resource Center at the Fashion Institute of Technology on 27th Street and Seventh Avenue. This new location for the Design Laboratory was convenient both to New York’s Seventh Avenue fashion district and for FIT’s students interested in utilizing the collection.
A regular exhibition schedule was established in 1973 at what were informally called the Galleries at FIT. Under the leadership of Robert Riley, a number of captivating exhibitions were mounted, including Paul Poiret, a collection of costumes by the famed and flamboyant French designer. In the 1980s, a conservation laboratory was established to protect and preserve the rapidly growing collection of costumes and textiles. Under the influential triumvirate of Laura Sinderbrand, Richard Martin, and Harold Koda, the Galleries at FIT presented innovative exhibitions such as Fashion and Surrealism, Splash! A History of Swimwear and Jocks and Nerds.
In 1993, the Board of Trustees of FIT, noting the significance of the Design Laboratory’s collections and exhibitions, changed the institution's name to The Museum at FIT. Dr. Valerie Steele joined the staff of the Museum in 1997 and brought her expertise to such exciting and influential exhibitions as China Chic, The Corset: Fashioning the Body and Femme Fatale: Fashion and Visual Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. In 2002, the Museum at FIT received the first Richard Martin Award for Excellence in Costume Exhibitions from The Costume Society of America for the show London Fashion. Dr. Steele was named Director of the Museum at FIT in 2003.
The collections continue to grow as pieces are donated or purchased. New acquisitions are considered when they are either exceptional examples or fill a gap in the collections. Today the museum’s collections have a dual function: as design laboratories used by students and professionals and as repositories where historically important objects can be safely preserved and exhibited for the education and aesthetic pleasure of present and future generations."
This is as according to the website.