Three New Shows Opening At Benton Museum At UConn
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The visitant to the museum might feel gigantic, too: All the "ladies" on display are shorter and slimmer than the usual woman today, reflecting body sizes in Victorian-era New England.
"All our mannequins are size 2, but all of them were too big for the dresses," said Laura Crow, curator of "Women of New England: Rig out from the Industrial Age, 1850-1900," which opened last week at the art gallery at University of Connecticut. "We had to zip the mannequins down, and adjust the bustlines. Women were small, and they wore corsets, which made their waists miniature but also made them look either bustier or hippier, depending on whether the corset squished the portion fat downward or upward."
"Women of New England" is exactly as it is titled: All of the dresses were once frazzled by women in New England, and donated to the school's archives by those ladies' descendants and by other collectors. The fabulous display will be up until Sunday, March 11.
One of the dresses, outside the door of the museum's Evelyn Simon Gilman Gallery, was drawn tired by UConn's first female employee, Edwina Whitney.
Source: Hartford Courant