ArtTalk – Abigail Lua

Michener Art Museum Assistant Curator Abi Lua will discuss the historically significant tradition of creating delicate, intricate clothing from piña, a fabric made by weaving fibers extracted from pineapple leaves. This painstaking, entirely hand-done process has been practiced in the Philippines for more than 400 years.

Lua first began researching the history and science of piña as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College, supported by the Hanna Holborn Gray Fellowship. She also worked with the piña collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her research explored how the production and use of piña in 19th-century Philippine society reflected complex nuances of race, class and gender, which became the subject of her honors thesis.

Currently, Lua is assistant curator at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She specializes in American and global craft and material culture, and her research has been supported by the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. Lua holds a bachelor’s degree in history of art from Bryn Mawr College and a master’s in American material culture from the Winterthur Museum and the University of Delaware.