What can a piece of clothing tell us about the people who wore it? The Shadows welcomed Sarah Duggan from the Historic New Orleans Collection's Decorative Arts of the Gulf Coast project to explore the rich stories woven into the Shadows-on-the-Teche's textile archive. Drawing on the collection's extensive holdings of nineteenth-century garments, Sarah revealed how clothing and textiles shaped everyday life for the adults and children who called the Shadows home, whether free or enslaved. She also shared new research tracing where the Weeks family sourced their garments and textiles, shedding light on the broader networks of trade and taste that defined the era.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sarah Duggan is the Decorative Arts of the Gulf South (DAGS) project manager at the Historic New Orleans Collection. DAGS documents and researches a wide variety of historic objects made or used in in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Cataloging fieldwork with graduate interns has taken Duggan across the region from Lafayette to Birmingham. She co-curated the exhibitions Pieces of History (2021) and Unknown Sitters (2024) and serves on the planning committee of New Orleans Antiques Forum. Sarah holds a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware and a bachelor’s in history and religious studies from the College of William and Mary.