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Myers as an Educator

In the early 1920s, Myers began acquiring textiles more methodically. He strove to assemble a collection that was as diverse as possible in order to build a comprehensive overview of non-Western textiles. In 1925, he orchestrated the transformation of his house into a museum, and of his private collection into a public one. At this point, his collecting focus increasingly shifted towards textiles that were historically important or technically unusual, regardless of their condition. He was well aware that museums, besides being arbiters of taste, were repositories of objects for further study and preservation, and he was interested in adding to the public's knowledge of textile history.

The care, study and appreciation of textiles were also important to Myers. He wanted others to appreciate the craftsmanship, design, ingenuity and beauty in the textiles he collected. Myers worked diligently to make textiles accepted as an important component of art history and to encourage scientific research on the care and conservation of textiles.

Beginning in the late 1930s, Myers became increasingly interested in engaging respected scholars to study the collection in order to publish catalogue raisonnés. He also drew upon the collection for educational purposes by organizing small traveling exhibitions, lending textiles to larger exhibitions and displaying textiles for lectures and presentations.

Myers considered collecting to be an essentially selfish activity and he cautioned that “a thing constantly to be guarded against is the desire to get something that nobody else has and, preferably, that they can’t get.” He warned that collecting for rarity creates a tendency to accept other people’s opinions of what are the best and most desired objects. Myers also felt this led collectors to pay high prices on the basis of scarcity rather than to make acquisitions as an expression of their own artistic taste. He advised new collectors to rely on their common sense as an aid to proper perspective.

Although Myers continually broadened the scope of his and the Museum’s collections, he remained focused on non-Western textiles. In expanding into new areas, he felt strongly that one must take the time to learn and understand the relevant material, either independently or by consulting scholars, before making important purchases.