#’everyone was giving their most valuable to museums willy nilly’

[lacewise]

Something I think I should correct: people did not gift museums tons of lace unsolicited. Or, at least, that’s not why museums have so much lace. Museums solicited a wild amount of lace because they felt it was a shortcut to establishing their reputations as sophisticated international museums.

What’s weird is the MET openly admits they were doing this and that’s why their lace collection is so large but I’ve still seen the misunderstanding that people’s great grandmothers’ just gave up expensive fabric they found at flea markets or something with holes, which they got great deals on it. That’s… that’s not what happened. It was very much wanted at the time. Like… that’s borderline misinformation and absolutely ridiculous. These are museums. They’re not secondhand stores???? Please reconsider.

Meanwhile, here in reality… they were fundraising specifically to buy lace collections. Huge lace collections. And then they bought more. You can read the excitement in the MET’s bulletins when someone buys them a new lace collection they tried to negotiate for but couldn’t afford. After already having plenty of lace! That’s how they ended up with 3000+ pieces! These were not unsolicited donations! That’s not why museums have such huge collections!

The MET also congratulated other museums on establishing or expanding their lace collections! Their bulletins are dripping with lace fervour! Learn who JP Morgan was!