Exhibit shows history of social drinking in Wichita and fashions the women wore

An exhibit that pairs the accessories of ritual drinking with fashions worn by Wichita women who gathered for teatime, coffee klatches and cocktails reopened this week at the Wichita Art Museum for a limited two-month run.

“Coffee and Cocktails,” which will be on display through Sept. 27, is a collaboration between WAM and the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum that allows each museum to display parts of their collection with a fun context, said officials with both museums.

“We have a wonderful decorative arts collection but it isn’t very often we show it off or find a project where we can pull it out,” said WAM director Patricia McDonnell. For this exhibition, visitors will see a variety of porcelain made in Germany, Britain and elsewhere used for teatime rituals and elegant Steuben Glass stemware for cocktails, along with other pieces used for coffeetime.

For the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, which has amassed a collection of women’s fashions from the late 1800s to the more recent decades, the exhibition is a chance to show the historical level of sophistication of local residents.

“We have a rich history of fashionable women. It wasn’t just a bunch of rowdy cowboys and scruffy trappers who lived here, there was an element of sophistication,” said Jami Frazier Tracy, curator of collections for the historical museum.

All of the clothing on display — from an 1885 cotton and velvet dress to a 1910 lingerie dress to 1920 flapper fashions to a 1950s day-to-evening wool and silk dress and jacket — once belonged to Wichita women, with some having been purchased by their original owners at Henry’s and Innes, Wichita’s well-known department stores of the past.

“Wichita did have a tradition of having elegant stores that you wouldn’t expect to find in the middle of Kansas,” Tracy said.

Much of the historical museum’s costume collection was amassed when the museum was directed by Robert Puckett, who realized the importance of collecting historical clothing, Tracy said. However, Tracy made a significant score she found the exhibition’s sole men’s item — an unworn Nehru jacket with a Henry’s label — in a local thrift store.

McDonnell recalled an early tour of the exhibition, which opened in August 2019 and then closed prematurely at the end of the year because of WAM renovations:

“It was really fun walking through the show with an older patron and he was looking at the object descriptions and he remembered the ladies who wore the clothing.”

She added: “It’s the coolest stuff.”

The exhibit is indeed an interesting look at the history of social drinking and the fashions that went with the occasions through the ages — especially if you’ve been spending your COVID-19 shut-in time imbibing in virtual cocktail hours and coffee times or binging on period dramas.

The exhibit starts with Americans carrying on British teatime traditions and flows to the speakeasies of Prohibition when it became more common for women to drink in public and then runs to the 1950s and 1960s when couples and friends threw cocktail parties in their homes. One display label referred to journalist Bernard Davis’ book, “The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto,” in which he advised that one should never let 6 o’clock find you without a friend and a cocktail.

Along with the designer clothes and decorative arts objects, vintage furniture from the historical museum is also displayed.

‘Coffee and Cocktails’ exhibit

What: A collaborative exhibit between the Wichita Art Museum and Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum that displays the serving items of ritual drinking and the fashions women wore between the late 1880s and 1960s.

When: now through Sunday, Sept. 27: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday

Where: Wichita Art Museum, 1400 W. Museum Blvd.

Cost: general admission Tuesday-Friday and Sunday is $10 for adults ages 18 and up, $5 ages 60 and older, $3 college/university students with ID and youth ages 5-17, free for WAM members and children under 5. Saturday admission is always free.

More info: 316-268-4980 or wichitaartmuseum.org