Egyptomania: Fashion’s Conflicted Obsession

Egyptian art has long served, and continues to serve, as a primary inspiration for fashion designers, solidifying the legacy of Egyptomania—the influence of the art of ancient Egypt. Join us as we welcome Darnell-Jamal Lisby, assistant curator of fashion at the Cleveland Museum and curator of Egyptomania: Fashion’s Conflicted Obsession, who will discuss the exhibition and the numerous questions raised by the intersection between Egyptomania and fashion from the past to the present.

Darnell-Jamal Lisby joined the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2021. A fashion historian, his charge is to develop projects rooted in fashion studies that range across the museum’s various curatorial departments. Before coming to Cleveland, Lisby was an education coordinator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and worked at an array of institutions in New York City, including the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Museum of Art. He also teaches in the Fashion Institute of Technology master’s program in fashion design, fortifying emerging designers with the historical knowledge they require to pursue fruitful careers. He has published extensively on numerous academic and mainstream platforms, including the Fashion and Race Database, Cultured magazine, and Teen Vogue.