Fashion takes center stage at new Cincinnati Art Museum gallery

The Cincinnati Art Museum is giving fashion and textiles a permanent home with the opening of the Mary W. Baskett Gallery.

The gallery will regularly rotate works from the museum’s collection of about 15,000 fashion and textile pieces, including clothing, accessories and fiber art from around the world. The exhibitions will explore fashion and its connections to other art forms.

The first featured exhibit, “Gesture and Meaning,” draws entirely from avant-garde fashion by Japanese designers, including Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.

“CAM’s interest in the study of fashion and textile as fine art forms harkens to the community orientation of the museum as belonging to all of Cincinnati,” shared Cameron Kitchin, the museum’s director. “Elevating design and decorative arts into our work honors both Mary and the entirety of our broad mission to inspire and connect through the power of art.”

A fashionable legacy, preserved

The gallery gets its name from arts historian and collector Mary W. Baskett, who died July 15 at age 85. 

Baskett served as a curator of prints at the Cincinnati Art Museum from 1965 to 1971 and specialized in Western and Japanese prints. She was instrumental in building the museum’s collection of 20th-century Japanese prints and later owned the Mary W. Baskett Gallery in Mount Adams, not far from the museum. She also was an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati.

She received the Minister of Foreign Affairs Tokyo Commendation Award in 2010 for her “contributions to cultural exchange in the field of art.”

In 2025, Baskett planned a $5 million gift to support the museum’s fashion arts and textiles collection. The gift helped establish the gallery and will endow the curator of fashion arts and textiles position. It also includes her collection of Japanese fashion and her research in art history.

“Mary’s journey from curator to educator to gallerist, collector, and philanthropist in Cincinnati speaks to her deep dedication to and love for the arts and our city. Her passing is a difficult loss for our community,” said Megan Nauer, CAM’s acting curator of fashion arts and textiles. “We are privileged to honor her legacy by carrying forward her dream of establishing a gallery committed to the display of fashion arts.”