The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum
Nineteen thousand textiles spanning five thousand years, shown in a purpose-built gallery after its collector's mansion was sold off.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum traces the collection's ninety years inside a Kalorama mansion built for George Hewitt Myers, an heir to the Bristol-Myers fortune who bought his first rug as a Yale freshman in 1896. You'll hear how curators worked around chimneys and staircases never meant to hold five thousand years of textiles, and why the university finally moved the collection here in 2011, closing the mansion's chapter as a museum. Listen for the glass and limestone atrium around you, built to give the objects room the old fireplaces never allowed.
This audio guide was created using AI.