Description
Lynne Zacek Bassett is an independent scholar specializing in New England’s historic costume and textiles. From 1995‒2000 she was the curator of textiles and fine arts at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Since going independent, Lynne has undertaken a number of large projects, including curating an exhibition and catalogue for the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford: “Modesty Died When Clothes Were Born: Costume in the Life and Literature of Mark Twain,” for which she won the Costume Society of America’s Richard Martin Award for Excellence in 2005. From 2007 to 2017, Lynne was the guest curator of costumes and textiles for the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, also in Hartford. In 2016 she produced an exhibition and catalogue for the Wadsworth, "Gothic to Goth: Romantic Era Fashion & Its Legacy," which was called "terrifically coherent" by the Wall Street Journal and reviewed with enthusiasm by the New York Times and numerous other print and online publications. Her work in the field of historic costume and textiles has been recognized by such prestigious institutions as the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, Historic New England, and the International Quilt Study Center, which have all elected her to membership in their honorary or advisory societies. Lynne is available for lectures, exhibition development, cataloging of historic costume and textile collections, and consultation on storage issues. With over 30 years of experience in both history and art museums, large and small, she is comfortable working with museums at every level of budget and staffing.
