The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts celebrates the long and colorful career of costume designer Willa Kim in her first-ever major retrospective exhibition, The Wondrous Willa Kim: Costume Designs for Actors and Dancers. Kim’s archive was acquired by the Library in 2017. The show features an assortment of designs and costumes from her long and prolific career, including work from productions like Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, The Will Rogers Follies, and her final Broadway show, Victor/Victoriastarring Julie Andrews.
From her earliest designs to her very last production, Willa Kim demonstrated her gift for creating whimsical costumes by using extraordinary combinations of color and texture.
Born in 1917 to Korean immigrant parents, Kim began her professional life as a painter in Los Angeles, California, where she grew up. After studying from what would later become CalArts, she found a job as an assistant to Barbara Karinska, working under Raoul Pène du Bois who designed costumes for the Ginger Rogers 1944 film Lady in the Dark.
Following her mentors to New York, Kim began designing costumes for Broadway productions, such as The Red Eye of Love, and Goodtime Charley, Song & Dance, Dancin’, Tommy Tune Tonite!
She designed costumes for some of the leading choreographers and dancers, like Eliot Feld and Michael Smuin, and production companies like Ballet Hispánico and American Ballet Theatre, as well as opera performances, figure skaters, and even some film and TV productions.
She even designed salad-themed dresses for a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. The exhibition will feature designs alongside some of the costumes that showcase Kim’s extraordinary range and ingenuity.
Willa Kim passed away in 2016 at the age of 99.
The Wondrous Willa Kim is curated by Bobbi Owen, professor emerita of the Department of Dramatic Art at the University North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she taught costume history and design. Owen is author of a monograph about Kim’s creative work published in 2005.
The Wondrous Willa Kim: Costume Designs for Actors and Dancers will be on view through August 19, 2023 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza (entrance at 111 Amsterdam Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets), NYC.
In a related Event, Learn more about Willa Kim on April 17th at 6pm. Bobbi Owen, the curator behind The Wondrous Willa Kim exhibition, presents a close examination of Willa Kim’s costumes in motion. In a free event at the Library for the Performing Arts, see Kim’s innovative designs made in New York, captured in performance footage from works preserved in the Library’s theatre and dance moving image archives. Owen will be joined by special guests from Kim’s life and career. RSVP Here.