The gift of a museum to a museum: Elizabeth Day McCormick’s textile collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Abstract

Born into a wealthy Chicago family, Elizabeth Day McCormick (1873-1957) dedicated her life and considerable means to collecting textiles, focusing on European needlework, costumes, and costume accessories from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Between 1943 and 1953, she donated approximately 6,000 objects to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Gertrude Townsend (1893-1979), the museum’s first textiles curator, worked closely with McCormick to encourage her patronage, manage the donation, and research and interpret objects in the collection. McCormick and the MFA serve as a case study for exploring the relationship between collectors and museums, and what happens when a collection is transferred from private to public ownership and an individual’s taste becomes institutional fact. The relationship of McCormick and Townsend also highlights how female networks of collectors, professionals, philanthropists, and enthusiasts influenced museum development, particularly in relation to textile and costume collections. Overall, the conviction that museums reflect intellectual and social priorities of their time drives this thesis, and this case study begins to dissect the institutional authority cultivated by museums.