The Lam on Loan

With nearly 30,000 objects in the Lam Museum’s permanent collection, the Museum serves as a source of artifacts and information for curators across the Southeast. Currently, you can see objects from the Lam’s permanent collection on exhibit in other locations on the Wake Forest campus, in North Carolina, and elsewhere in the Southeast.

At Wake Forest, two Navajo weavings from the Lam collection are on display at the Hanes Art Gallery in Escape Velocities: New Acquisitions to the Reece Collection of Student-Acquired Contemporary Art through December 8, 2024. Every four years since 1963, a group of Wake Forest students have chosen artwork for the University. This year, the group focused on diversifying the collection by adding underrepresented artists and choosing works in a variety of mediums, like “Summer Bloom, 2023,” a weaving by Navajo textile artists Melissa Cody. The Lam’s pieces are paired with this textile to provide cultural context.

In Raleigh, you will find two Lam collection objects at the Gregg Museum of Art and Design at North Carolina State University. You can visit an Adrinka cloth from Ghana and Ndebele apron from South Africa in their exhibit Material Messages: The Tales That Textiles Tell through January 25, 2025. The exhibit explores how people use textiles to convey narrative. The Adinkra cloth demonstrates how time and effort can affect commerce and result in alternative production methods and aesthetics. But more significantly, its red color identifies its usage as a funerary wrapper. The beaded married woman’s apron is connected to a girl’s beaded Ndebele apron from the Gregg’s collection. This pairing highlights not only how different aprons visually identify the life stages of Ndebele females but also the visual culture and beading techniques unique to the Ndebele.

And finally, the Lam Museum has a long-standing relationship with the curators at Epcot Center. In the Mexico pavilion, you can find objects from our Day of the Dead collection in the exhibit Remember Me! La Celebración del Día de Muertos. In the Morocco pavilion, a Tuareg camel saddle, tea pot, and drinking glass set from the Lam are featured in the Culture of the Desert section of the exhibit Race Against the Sun: Ancient Technique to Modern Competition. Later this year, the saddle will be exchanged for another one from the Lam, and a cosmetic applicator, wallet, food bowl, and several prestige bracelets from the Lam collection will be added. Walt Disney World is generously funding current conservation work on several of these objects.