Willa Kim: Made in New York

This event will take place in person at The Library for the Performing Arts.

Bobbi Owen, the curator behind exhibition at the Library for the Performing Arts, presents a close examination of Willa Kim’s costumes in motion. See Kim’s innovative designs made in New York, captured in performance footage from works preserved in the Library’s theatre and dance moving image archives. Owen will be joined by special guests from Kim’s life and career.

In The Wondrous Willa Kim, The Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the long and colorful career of costume designer Willa Kim in her first-ever major retrospective exhibition. Kim’s archive was acquired by the Library in 2017. The show features an assortment of designs and costumes from her long and prolific career, including work from productions like Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, The Will Rogers Follies, and her final Broadway show, Victor/Victoria starring Julie Andrews.

Read more about the exhibition.

Bobbi Owen is professor emerita of dramatic art at the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she taught costume design and history, and author of a monograph of Kim’s work published in 2005.

photo: Willa Kim, 1966. detail of Photo © Jack Mitchell. Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts -Bruno Walter Auditorium, Enter via 111 Amsterdam Ave. between West 64th and 65th Street, New York, United States