CINCINNATI, OH.- The Taft Museum of Art welcomes Jane Austen: Fashion & Sensibility, a special exhibition displaying costumes from eight acclaimed film adaptations of Jane Austen’s classic novels. The collection is traveling from London, England for its North American debut at the Taft, on view June 11–September 4, 2022.

Fashion & Sensibility opens in tandem with the completion of the museum’s $12.7 million Bicentennial Infrastructure Project that is preserving and protecting the 200-year-old Taft historic house, a National Historic Landmark. Extending from the museum’s Fifth Third Gallery into the rehabilitated house and among a newly reinterpreted permanent collection, Jane Austen: Fashion & Sensibility features approximately fifty costumes and accessories worn in popular film and television productions. Drawn from the collection of award-winning British costume house Cosprop Ltd, these meticulously tailored ensembles will transport audiences to the Regency era through ball gowns, wedding dresses, hats, jackets, and more.

Fashion & Sensibility provides an unforgettable opportunity to see, up close, costumes worn by Hollywood celebrities including Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Judi Dench, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant. The exhibition brings to life beloved characters from Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Mansfield Park, while revealing powerful themes of class, gender, and social dynamics in Austen’s world.

The Taft also presents Jane Austen in London: A Wall-Sized Map in the museum’s Sinton Gallery in conjunction with Fashion & Sensibility. Measuring seven by thirteen feet, this massive work on paper represents a monumental achievement in cartography and will illustrate London locations from both Austen’s fiction and her life. The 18th-century map is lent to the museum by the Estate of Sallie Robinson Wadsworth.