Our current exhibitions are ‘Corsets and Crinolines’ (in the downstairs gallery), and the Little Black Dress (in the upstairs gallery).
The Costume Collection of over two thousand pieces may be most accurately described as Dress and Textiles. As well as women’s, men’s and children’s clothing, we have quilts, tablecloths, bedcovers, Ayrshire blankets, machine-made lace from Darvel, and of course Ayrshire embroidery or “floorin”, as it was known. Unlike many collections we have tried to collect working clothes where they still exist and many we have are unique, such as the Garibaldi shirt in turkey red cotton. Each spring season we mount a large themed exhibition drawn from a period within the two centuries the collection covers. In the Winter months, specialist exhibitions are often held.