TYLER, TX.- The Tyler Museum of Art is celebrating the debut of its major summer exhibition, Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan, with the final program in its 2009 Spring Lecture Series on Sunday, June 7.

Annie Van Assche, independent curator and editor of the catalogue that accompanies the Fashioning Kimono exhibition, is scheduled to present the lecture titled “The Kimono and Western Dress in the Early 20th Century: A Revolution in Fashion” at 2 p.m. in Tyler Junior College’s Jean Browne Theatre. A book signing will follow the program at the TMA, where copies of the exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase in the Museum Gift Shop. Lecture tickets are free for TMA members, $5 for seniors and students, and $7 for adult non-members (price includes exhibition admission).

Ms. Van Assche is a textile artisan and Japanese art historian specializing in Japanese textiles. For the past 10 years, she has worked as curator of textiles for the celebrated collection of Jeffrey Montgomery, an American residing in Lugano, Switzerland, who is recognized throughout the globe as a peerless collector of Japanese arts and crafts. The Montgomery Collection is composed of more than 1,200 items, approximately 300 of which are textiles. Fashioning Kimono is drawn from that group, focusing on different varieties of kimono created in the late 19th- to mid-20th centuries. A collection of period photographs, on loan from the International Hokusai Research Center in Milan, Italy, accompanies the exhibition.

During the span of her work with the Montgomery Collection, Ms. Van Assche has curated several exhibitions, including Giappone color indaco (The Color Indigo; 2003, Biblioteca di via Senato, Milan, Italy), and Avvolti nel Mito (Wrapped in Myth; 2005, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, Italy). Prior to this, she worked as curator of education for the Japan Society of New York, collections manager for the Morikami Museum and Japanese Garden in Delray Beach, Florida, and as curatorial assistant for the Honolulu Academy of Arts in Hawaii. In addition to authorship of catalogues for various exhibitions she has curated, her essays have appeared in Five Tastes (2001), Timeless Beauty (2002) and Taishō Chic (2002). She is editor and principal author for Fashioning Kimono: Dress and Modernity in Early Twentieth-Century Japan (2006, 5 Continents Editions, Milan, Italy), the catalogue that accompanies the Fashioning Kimono touring exhibition. She holds an M.A. in Japanese Art History from the University of Hawaii, and resides in New York City.

The Spring Lecture Series program featuring Ms. Van Assche commemorates the public opening of Fashioning Kimono at the TMA, which continues through Aug. 16 in the Museum’s North Gallery. Underwriter for the opening lecture is Mildred H. Grinstead.