George Washington University Museum and Textile Museum Now Open in Foggy Bottom

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

An old Washington, D.C., museum is open to the public once more, in a new location and with a new name. The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum welcomed its first visitors on March 21.

D.C.’s Textile Museum was founded in 1925 by collector George Hewitt Myers as an international center for the exhibition, study, collection and preservation of the textile arts. For about nine decades, its collection, which includes some of the world’s finest examples of rugs and textiles, was housed in the Myers family home, a historic building on S Street, N.W.  From now on, however, Foggy Bottom will be its home.

In 2011, the George Washington University announced a partnership with The Textile Museum and real estate developer Albert Small, president of Southern Engineering Corp. The partnership resulted in the creation of The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum. It not only includes The Textile Museum’s highly regarded collections of more than 19,000 non-Western textiles and carpets but also the Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection, with its 1,000 artifacts documenting the history of Washington, D.C.

The new museum will be located on GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus, in a 53,000-square-foot, LEED Gold-certified complex. The new facility is D.C.’s largest university museum. It includes a newly constructed, 46,000-square-foot museum and exhibition space attached to the 7,000-square-foot renovated historic Woodhull House. In addition to the two collections, the new complex will house the Arthur D. Jenkins Library, the Albert H. Small Center for National Capital Area Studies and the museum shop.

Photo credit: museum.gwu.edu