The Anacostia Community Museum will be closed from January 8, 2024-March 22, 2024. We will reopen on Saturday, March 23, 2024 with our next exhibition, A Bold and Beautiful Vision: A Century of Black Arts Education in Washington, DC,1900-2000. We hope you will join us! 

Woman’s Suit Jacket

Object Details

Date
Mid-20th century
Medium
cotton and synthetic fabric, metal
Dimensions
23 7/16 × 20 1/16 in. (59.5 × 51 cm)
Sleeve: 14 3/16 in. (36 cm)
Caption
The woven fabric of this elegant jacket creates a checkerboard pattern in blue, white, and metallic gold thread. The jacket features a round neckline and three-quarter length sleeves. Vertical blue borders finish its front panels. On its horizontal edge, white thread and the checkerboard pattern yield to alternating rows of gold and blue. Fringe, also gold and blue, trims the bottom of the jacket, which falls at the hip.
The jacket belonged to renowned scholar-librarian Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995), who organized and developed an unparalleled collection rooted in African American history that would become the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC. She might have acquired the jacket and its matching skirt (1997.0020.0060b) while in Lagos, Nigeria between 1962 and 1964 to develop the National Library of Nigeria’s collection, a project commissioned by the Ford Foundation.
Accession Number
1997.0020.0060a
Type
jacket
See more items in
Anacostia Community Museum Collection
Data Source
Anacostia Community Museum
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
GUID
http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/dl8455f4adf-a606-4662-9ce0-647d64aeafcf
Record ID
acm_1997.0020.0060a
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