Dear Jen, I am sure you will have a good time in New York when you visit in February. However, I hope you did not get the idea from Aurelia's email that the Ratti Textile Center is a place that you can arrive at and see textiles without advance appointment, like for instance, the Victoria and Albert's lace room. It is a study center where, with an appointment, items can be viewed on a computer screen and if the researcher wishes to see some of them, another appointment is made to return at a later date to see the chosen items. It lends itself more to someone who is making a serious study of some particular thing. However, the museum in which it is located, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a fantastic museum and has all sorts of decorative arts in it. Although there are only 5 pieces of lace on exhibit, there are many beautiful tapestries and some embroideries to be found within its huge structure and there are European Oil Paintings with some finely painted lace there as well. At the time of your visit "Nan Kempner, American Chic" will be at the Costume Institute in the Metropolitan Museum. It deals with American Sportswear as exemplified by the socialite Nan Kempner. Also there will be a show called "One of a Kind: The Studio Craft Movement" dealing with craft work after World War II. I have no idea what is in it, other than there will be 50 items and some will be fiber. You can check this out on _www.metmuseum.org_ (http://www.metmuseum.org) . If you would like I could send you over the internet a map of the museum which shows where the lace items and better lace paintings are. I call it the "lace walk", but unfortunately, they do move things around a bit and the paintings are not always where they are supposed to be. Another branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Cloisters, which is located at Fort Tryon Park, even further uptown, than the main museum. There they have the Unicorn Tapestries, which really are so beautiful that if you are a textile enthusiast you might want to make a special point of seeing them. You can read about the Cloisters by going to the _www.metmuseum.org_ (http://www.metmuseum.org) site and clicking Cloisters on the left side menu. You can see an entire exploration of these tapestries at _http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/unicorn_splash.htm_ (http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/unicorn_splash.htm) . My favorite part is The Birds and the Beasts where you run your computer mouse over a beast, click, and a description of his historical, mythical, iconic significance suddenly appears on the screen. _http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/unicorn_fauna.htm_ (http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Unicorn/unicorn_fauna.htm) # While the Cooper-Hewitt has a great textile collection, its trend in recent years is to have no set part of the collection on view. Instead they have big shows some of which have very little to do with textiles because their real mission is to be a Design Museum. The show that will be there when you are in town is "National Design Triennial:Design Life Now. _http://ndm.si.edu/EXHIBITIONS/triennial/design_life_now.asp_ (http://ndm.si.edu/EXHIBITIONS/triennial/design_life_now.asp) will tell you about it. It does mention "new fashion". So if your interest extends to fashion it might be fun, but you will have to see robotics as well. The Fashion Institute, a school of fashion, (not to be confused with the Costume Institute at the Met) has a museum _www.fitnyc.edu/museum/_ (http://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/) which will have two shows, one about color in fashion and one about a designer, Ralph Ricci. The color in fashion exhibit might have some lace because it is part of their revolving exhibit of the permanent collection and claims to cover 250 years of fashion. They do have a good lace collection, but not usually much of it on display. It is quite a small museum but always interesting to people who like fashion. I think your best bet, but not if you are uncomfortable with modernity, will be the Museum of Arts and Design (formerly the American Craft Museum) _www.madmuseum.org_ (http://www.madmuseum.org) which will be having Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting. If you go to the website, click "see" and then future exhibitions. Be warned that no matter how radical we may think 17th century lace was, you will not find it in this museum show. The lace is going to be very radical and new and some of it may not even qualify as "lace" in the minds of many traditional lace makers. I have been privileged to see some of the planning that is going into the show and they will have huge netted structures and lace made of glass and things like that. The Niels van Eijk Bobbin lace lamp made of optical glass fiber will be in it (shown on MAD museum website).The top part of it is formed by braiding similar to a droschel mesh. Some of the pieces are being made expressly for the show and even the organizers don't know what they will be. It should be very mind expanding and I am looking forward to it. But, as you will see at the site, there is one soft sculpture, a knitted man, 8 1/2 feet tall, in gray yarn. On his chest it says "Craft Kills" and he is impaled with knitting needles. Again, it might be best to see this exhibit without the husband in tow, lest he identify too strongly with this piece. For those who might be in New York before its closing on Jan. 4, I might also point out that there is an exhibit in a gallery, the Lemmons Contemporary Gallery, of the work of Tracy Krumm. Tracy Krumm crochets wire to make lacy structures, often attached to farm implements obtained at farm auctions. Her recent work in developing colored patinas on the metal have yielded some pretty and delicate effects. Her work can be seen at _www.lemmonscontemporary.com_ (http://www.lemmonscontemporary.com) and _http://users.lmi.net/tkrumm/available1.html_ (http://users.lmi.net/tkrumm/available1.html) . Devon doyenne of the New York lace/art scene
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