First Faculty Advisor

Jolicoeur, Ernest

Second Faculty Advisor

Mangieri, Anthony F.

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Description

Students taking an upper-level Art History class at Salve Regina University created the diary of Mary Anna Violet in the fall of 2024. Anthony F. Mangieri and Ernest Jolicoeur co-taught a class called Curatorial Practice and the Gallery Experience (ART 405), which focused on an exhibition of Gilded Age dress that they organized in Salve Regina University's Dorrance Hamilton Gallery.

Mary Anna Violet is not a real person. She is a hypothetical turn of the century protagonist whose point of view becomes the narrative device and interpretive lens through which this book explores fashion and the Gilded Age. Mary Anna's diary is part scrapbook, part journal, and part photograph album. To create the entries, students combined research, creative writing, visual artworks, primary source materials, and their own hands-on knowledge of pieces in the show. The result is a first-person account that creates new narratives and restores the human dimension that motivated the creation of this clothing, no longer worn on bodies in the real world, but carefully safeguarded in storage.

Publication Date

2025

Keywords

Gilded Age, Newport, art history, historical fiction, middle class fashion, diary, 19th-century, textiles, curatorial practice

The Diary of Mary Anna Violet: A Young Woman's Memoir of Fashion in Gilded Age Newport

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