WASHINGTON — You can’t vacuum a priceless antique rug with a Hoover, and the Textile Museum will use one of its largest gifts ever to buy specialized care and preservation equipment for its collection.
The Boulder, Colorado-based Avenir Foundation finalized a $5 million gift to the Textile Museum. The museum will name its collections storage and conservation facility in Ashburn, Virginia, the Avenir Foundation Conservation and Collections Resource Center.
The storage facility is on George Washington University’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus.
The Textile Museum, which occupied side-by-side mansions in D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood for decades before merging with the George Washington University Museum, moved to a new museum on George Washington’s Foggy Bottom campus last year.
The Avenir Foundation pledged the $5 million gift in 2014, and recently made the final installment.
The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum opened in their shared home in March 2015. The two partnered on the 46,000-square-foot joint museum at 21st and G streets in Northwest.
The Textile Museum’s 88-year-old collection includes more than 20,000 textile artifacts, some dating back to 600 A.D.
The museum also includes a gallery showcasing the university’s collection of historic Washington maps and documents.
