'Lucky Lindy' Scarf c. 1928

Curator: Right now, we’re looking at "Lucky Lindy" Scarf, made around 1928. It's a mixed-media piece, primarily silk, and currently resides here at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Editor: My first impression is lightness—airy, even. The color palette is restrained, mostly whites and gentle greens. It feels celebratory, almost like a whispered cheer. Curator: That lightness comes from the material and the craft. This scarf exists because of a specific historical and social excitement—namely Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. You can almost picture the hands that meticulously stitched the embroidery, a labor of love commemorating this event. The materiality, the silk itself, was likely a precious commodity and imbued with its own set of cultural meanings about status and wealth, considering the time. Editor: Absolutely, and the choice to represent flight through something so tactile, so inherently grounded, feels… human. I mean, look at the planes! They're simplified, almost cartoonish, and this little row of planes reminds me of when I used to spend hours making paper airplanes, each flight full of naive ambition. Does that make sense? There’s a bittersweet nostalgia at play, thinking of the sheer excitement the event would have made! Curator: It's fascinating how seemingly ‘simple’ art forms, like this hand-embroidered scarf, encapsulate layers of technological progress, celebrity culture, and shifts in gendered labor of the time. These scarves were purchased and consumed within the spectacle surrounding Lindbergh. Was it an affordable means to consume fashion at that time? Were many similar items made to mark the rise of aviation, but lost to the flow of material production and the disposal cycles so prominent at that point and accelerating in the west now? Editor: Yes! I see what you mean – it makes me think of those old propaganda posters repurposed on Etsy, where revolution has now been commodified to quirky memorabilia. Curator: Exactly! And here, in this demure scarf, the spectacle and labor and materials blend to make an artifact that echoes the collective experience of technological wonder. We are standing among this history today. Editor: Thanks, the context you provided about all the production shifts makes a simple piece so interesting and helps me reimagine that moment as being part of now, today.