French fashion design shaped American fashion design from the late nineteenth century Art Nouveau era until Art Deco, in the early 1920s and 1930s. The focus on Americana culture in fashion contrasting the strong French influence on fashion of the time is prominent here in this exhibition. Throughout, there is a focus on particularly Americana fabrics and prints, holding extreme contradictions to the focus on french fashion and style at the time. 

A newly hired art director for the Stehli Silks cooperation in Americana, Kneeland L. Green, visited the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925, and felt inspired by the trip to make a solely Americana infused print line, whose work is shows throughout this exhibition.

Separation from French fashion styles and traditions — one of the biggest fashion inspirations for the time — held prominence in Americana fashion lines, and its influence on international fashion as a whole. This exhibition was a direct act against the heavy emphasis on french fashion on Americana fashion, going along with the staple argument of purely Americana lines in American fashion companies and design. 

Green hired American artisans because he noticed American life style was different from what was being portrayed on the usual, causing a renewed view of Americana as a whole, and changing the influence of the American market on the world, especially fashion, after WWI.

I think that this is considered a process based interpretation, considering the exhibition does not solely focus on the techniques and craftsmanship of the works, but rather the overarching themes and statements made by the pieces as a collection, and leaves room for viewers to engage and take away what they please from said pieces.

Christopher Whitehead, who runs the Art Museum and Gallery Studies postgraduate program at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University, UK, discusses in great length the difference of interpretation in museums as either product-based or process-based. Through his analyzations and philosophical text, he emphasizes the importance and inherit strength of process-based interpretation, over product-based interpretation. According to Whitehead, process-based interpretation has more of a participational aspect to it, versus interpretation which is product-based, which has a fixed, defined meaning and message to take away. 

This particular method engages the viewers on a lesser scale than with process-based interpretation, which wrings out the ideas and creativity of the viewer themselves when it comes to interpreting exhibitions. This practical method leaves room for open-ended questions and interpretations that stem from the visitors’ minds, without creating a set authoritative meaning that cannot be dispensed, warped or perceived in any other way. 

Creating exhibition interpretations in a product-based manner can make the space feel uncomfortable and complicated, especially considering that viewers might not be experts in the given topic, such as children, tourists, and students. This can lead to pushing away some viewers, in fear that they are not meant for the space. That they do not belong. 

As Whitehead explains, “Process-based interpretation might function, in other words, to ‘ground’ art, removing it from the transcendental sphere which arguably works to exclude those visitors who have not internalized the kind of map of objective, stylistic, technical and educational relations which has structured most art historical study in the modern period and today” (Whitehead, p. 42). Here, Whitehead emphasizes the alienation of non-experts and how process-based interpretation can transcend these preconceived notions of the museum atmosphere, space, and information. An example of a process-based interpretation in an exhibition that Whitehead cites is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow. 

“One way of ‘opening’ museum interpretation is the posing of questions (see Rand 1990, Litwak 1996, Hirshi and Screven 1988 and Bitgood 2003). Many labels – especially those intended for family audiences. This can be exemplified in the following example at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow pertaining to Anne Redpath’s oil painting Pinks: ‘This painting has very vibrant colors. Anne Redpath was interested in the effects colors have on mood when they are placed beside each other. How do these colors make you feel?” (Whitehead, p. 43).