Installed for two weeks in November 1919, The Exhibition of Industrial Art in Textiles and Costumes occupied two of the American Natural History Museum’s permanent exhibition halls. Examples of modern and indigenous technologies were displayed in the Plains Indians Hall, and the Eastern Woodlands Indians Hall housed the sartorial exhibits. 

Screens divided the Woodlands Hall into alcoves that contained a number of exhibits. Seven alcoves were devoted to special installations by key contemporary designers and manufacturers—namely, David Aaron & Co. Embroideries; H. R. Mallinson & Co.; A. Beller & Co. by Max Meyer; Harry Collins; Winifred Warren for Bonwit Teller & Co.; and a batik installation by Ruth Reeves, Martha Ryther, Hazel Burnham Slaughter, and Mary Tannahill. Additional space was also given to two ethnographic exhibits. The remaining exhibitors were grouped into smaller alcoves, each demonstrating a technique or theme and illustrating a relationship between non-Western art and design and its application to modern use. 

American Art in American Dress revisits this 1919 exhibition.