{"id":21590,"date":"2018-01-24T09:51:14","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T14:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/?page_id=21590\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T14:47:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T19:47:41","slug":"cynthia-cooper","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/en\/collections\/team\/cynthia-cooper\/","title":{"rendered":"Cynthia Cooper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Head, Collections and Research
\nCurator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles<\/h4>\n

I love looking closely at a garment and finding stories in its materials, its stitches and signs of wear. Clothing plunges me into intimate and complex conversations with the past.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

________<\/p>\n

Cynthia Cooper is particularly drawn to telling stories about dress and fashion that have become entangled with Canadian identity projects. Most recently, she is curator of the exhibition Costume Balls: Dressing Up History, 1870-1927<\/em>,<\/a> and lead author and editor of the volume with the same title, co-published by the Museum and 5 Continents Editions in 2024. Leading up to that project she investigated an eighteenth-century dress whose journey mirrors that of the first wave of Black emancipation and settlement in Canada<\/a>.\u00a0In 2019, w<\/span><\/span>ith the short film \u201cGet Your Maple Leaf Tartan On!\u201d<\/a> disseminated on social media, she created a conversation around inclusivity using Canada\u2019s most obscure national symbol\u2014a textile. She is the impetus behind EncycloFashionQC<\/a>, the unique online encyclopaedic reference for the history of fashion in Quebec, and oversees its content.<\/p>\n

Cooper joined the Museum in 1998 as Curator, where she oversees the largest museum collection of Canadian dress. She has also headed the Collections and Research department since 2009. A lifelong interest in clothing design and construction eventually led her to an MS in Historic Costume and Textiles from the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

The Museum is a four-time recipient of the Richard Martin Exhibition Award from the Costume Society of America, including for her projects Fashioning Expo 67<\/em><\/a><\/strong> in 2018 and Reveal or Conceal?<\/em><\/a><\/strong> in 2009. She was curator for Love in Fine Fashion<\/strong><\/em><\/a> in 2014 and provided curatorial leadership for the 2013 travelling exhibition From Philadelphia to Monaco: Grace Kelly \u2013 Beyond the Icon<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, as well as the 2011 exhibition and catalogue 90 Treasures, 90 Stories, 90 Years<\/em><\/a><\/strong>. She was also the Museum\u2019s curatorial representative for the travelling exhibitions Christian Dior<\/em><\/a><\/strong> in 2020-2021, Balenciaga: Master of Couture<\/em><\/a><\/strong> in 2018 and Eleganza: Italian Fashion from 1945 to Today<\/em><\/a><\/strong> in 2016.<\/p>\n

She has organized three McCord colloquia: Costume Balls: The Symposium <\/em><\/a>in 2025 as well as\u00a0Bodies on Display <\/em>in 2008 and Collecting Knowledge: New Dialogues on McCord Museum Collections<\/em> in 2013, the latter in collaboration with Joanne Burgess of UQAM under the SSHRC-funded project Montr\u00e9al, Dynamic HubSpace<\/em>. She has represented the Museum in the SSHRC-funded project Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America<\/em><\/a>, contributed to the work of the Laboratoire d\u2019histoire et du patrimoine de Montr\u00e9al<\/em><\/a> based at UQAM, and has been a member of the \u201cTailored clothes for women, 1750-1930\u201d research project under the ACORSO (Appearances, Bodies & Societies) research interest group at the Universit\u00e9 de Rennes.<\/p>\n

Active in professional associations, she has served on the national board of the Costume Society of America. She has taught courses on the intersections between fashion and art, and on fashion history, textile history and material culture in Concordia University\u2019s Faculty of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, and on fashion history at LaSalle College.<\/p>\n

More about the Dress, Fashion and Textiles Collection<\/i><\/a>
\nExplore the collection online<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Head, Collections and Research Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles I love looking closely at a garment and finding stories in its materials, its stitches and signs of wear. Clothing plunges me into intimate and complex conversations with the past. ________ Cynthia Cooper is particularly drawn to telling stories about dress and fashion that have become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":21589,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/page-texte.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCynthia Cooper - Curator, Dresss, Fashion and Textiles - McCord Stewart Museum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Meet Cynthia Cooper, Head, Collections and Research, and Curator of the Dress, Fashion and Textiles collection and learn more about her expertise and her work.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/en\/collections\/team\/cynthia-cooper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cynthia Cooper\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Head, Collections and Research Curator, Dress, Fashion and Textiles I love looking closely at a garment and finding stories in its materials, its stitches\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/en\/collections\/team\/cynthia-cooper\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"McCord Stewart Museum\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/museemccordstewart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T19:47:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/app\/uploads\/2025\/07\/mccord-stewart_cooper_cynthia_1320x480_20250702_ld-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1320\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"480\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@MuseeMcCordStew\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/en\/collections\/team\/cynthia-cooper\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.musee-mccord-stewart.ca\/en\/collections\/team\/cynthia-cooper\/\",\"name\":\"Cynthia Cooper - 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