Bio
B.A. Anthropology, Grinnell College, USA
MSt (Distinction) Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK
PhD (Prix de thèse) African Studies, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Paris, France
Dr. Sarah Fee joined the ROM in April, 2009. She stewards the museum’s renowned collection of ca. 15,000 textiles and fashions that come from greater Asia and Africa, as well as eastern Europe.
She owes her deep appreciation of weaving arts to the women of Ambondro, Madagascar, who hosted her and shared their knowledge during years of anthropological study in the 1990s. Since then, Sarah has researched and published on the textile arts, fashions, and trades of Madagascar and the wider western Indian Ocean world, which embraces southern Arabia, eastern Africa and western India. Other thematic interests include ceremonial exchange, spinning and dye technologies, and the history of museum textile collecting. Her research has been supported by grants from The Wenner Gren Foundation, The Pasold Fund, and the Social Science and Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
At ROM, Sarah’s major exhibition projects include ‘Born of the Indian Ocean: The Silks of Madagascar’ (2015), ‘Cloth that Changed the World: India’s Painted and Printed Cottons’ (2020), ‘and the forthcoming ROM-original exhibition ‘Monsoon Worlds of the Indian Ocean.’ Prior to joining ROM, she co-founded the Tandroy Ethnographic Museum (Berenty, Madagascar) and guest-curated ‘Gifts & Blessings, the Textile Arts of Madagascar’ (Smithsonian Institution).
She co-chairs ROM’s IARTS Textiles of India Grant, and the Veronika Gervers Textiles Research Fellowship.
Dr. Fee is cross-appointed to the Art History Department, University of Toronto. She is a Research Affiliate at the Indian Ocean World Centre (McGill University), a Senior Fellow of Massey College, and serves on the editorial board of the Textile Museum Journal.
Galleries & Exhibitions
Research Projects
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Publications
- 2025‘Africa’s Active Nodes Along the Silk Roads’, in John Vollmer and Karthika Audinet, eds. Re-Think Silk. George Washington University Textile Museum/Cotsen Traces Collection
- 2023‘Fashion Systems in the Indian Ocean World from Ancient Times to c. 1850’, in Christopher Breward, Beverly Lemire and Giogio Riello, eds. Cambridge Global History of Fashion, volume, 1. Cambridge University Press/Pasold Fund, pp. 630-671.
- 2023‘A Decade of Tableaux and Friendship (2000-2010)’, in Bientot je vous Tisse tout. Mme Zo. Antananarivo: Fondation H.
- 2023‘Changing Global Fashion Forever: Indian chintz and Indo-European entanglements’, in Hamish Bowles, ed., India in Fashion, Rizolli, pp. 97-103
- 2022African Textiles (co-authored with Duncan Clarke, Vanessa Drake Moraga). Paris: Prestel.
- 2022‘Finding Fashion in the Museum: (re-)Assembling a Pre-Colonial Eastern African Fashion Moment’, in JoAnn McGregor et al., eds. Creating African Fashion Histories: Politics, Museums and Sartorial Practice, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- 2021‘Mid-Nineteenth Century Weavings from Imerina, Madagascar: A Missionary’s Collection in Dialogue with Contemporaneous Malagasy texts’, Textile Museum Journal, vol. 48, pp. 3-13.
- 2021‘Silk, Cotton, and Raffia Roads: Sub-Saharan Africa and global textile exchanges’, in M.L Nosch and Zhao Feng, eds., Textiles and Clothing Along the Silk Roads, UNESCO/China National Silk Museum.
- 2020‘Cotton, Colour and Desire: Indian Chintz,’ in Sarah Fee ed., Cloth That Changed the World: The Art and Fashion of Indian Chintz, ROM Publications & Yale University Press.
- 2020‘The Flowering Family Tree of Indian Chintz, in Sarah Fee ed., Cloth that Changed the World: The Arts, Science and Fashion of Indian Chintz, ROM Publications & Yale University Press.
- 2020‘Cloth that Changed the World’, Hali Magazine, Issue 203.
- 2020‘The King’s New Clothing: Re-Dressing the Body Politic in Madagascar, c. 1815-1861’, in Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, eds., Dressing Global Bodies: The Politics of Fashion in World History, Routledge.
- 2019‘Filling Hearts With Joy: Handcrafted “Indian textile” Exports to Central Eastern Africa in the Nineteenth Century’, in Edward Alpers and Chhaya Goswami, eds., Trans-regional Trade and Traders: Situating Gujarat in the Indian Ocean from Early Times to c. 1900, Oxford University Press.
- 2019‘Colourful Collecting: “Indian Chintz” at the Royal Ontario Museum’. Textiles Asia, Volume 11, Issue 2, pp. 3-16.
- 2018‘The Dearest Thing on the East African Coast: Muscat cloth in East Central Africa’, in Pedro Machado, Sarah Fee, and Gwyn Campbell eds. An Ocean of Cloth: Textile Trades, Consumer Cultures and the Textile Worlds of the Indian Ocean. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 209-252.
- 2018‘La Parure à Madagascar', in Madagascar, Arts de la Grande Ile. Aurélien Gaborit, ed. Paris: Actes Sud, pp. 182-189.
- 2017‘Entangled Histories: an Introduction to The Trans-Local Textile Trades of Eastern Africa’ (with Pedro Machado), Textile History, 48(1):4-14, a special volume on ‘The Trans-Local Textile Trades of Eastern Africa’.
- 2017‘Cloth with Names”’: Luxury Textile Imports in Eastern Africa, ca. 1800-1885’, Textile History, 48 (1):49-84.
- 2016‘British Scarlet Broadcloth: the Perfect Red in Eastern Africa, c. 1820-1900’, in Jonathan Faiers and Mary Westerman Bulgarellea, eds., Colors in Fashion. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 187-198.2013a ‘Materiality and Fashion.’ In Helen Thomas, Regina Root, Sandy Black, Amy de la Haye, Joanne Entwhistle and Agnes Rocamora, eds. The Fashion Studies Handbook. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 301-324.
- 2015‘Before There Was Pinterest: Textile Study Rooms in North America’. Proceedings of the Textile Society of America 15th Annual Bi-annual Symposium ‘New Directions’. Nebraska Digital Commons.
- 2015‘A Forgotten “Hybrid” Art: the Carved Bed Panels of Nineteenth-Century Imerina’. Tsingy (Revue du Centre d’Histoire de l’Université de la Réunion) 17:67-78 [Noël J. Gueunier second author].
- 2015‘Rug collecting at the Royal Ontario Museum: A tale of fits and starts.’ In Natalia Nekrassova, ed., From Ashgabat to Istanbul: Oriental Rugs from Canadian Collections. Toronto: Textile Museum of Canada, pp. 136-145.
- 2014‘By Design: Imperial Chinese Dress’. Orientations [John Vollmer with Sarah Fee] 45(4):108-116.
- 2013‘Hostage to Cloth: European Explorers in East Africa, 1850-1890.’ Proceedings of the Textile Society of America 13th Bi-annual Symposium, ‘Textiles and Politics’, Washington, D.C., 2012. Nebraska Digital Commons.
- 2013‘The Shape of Fashion: the Historic Silk Brocades (akotifahana) of Highland Madagascar.’ African Arts Autumn, 46(3):26-39.
- 2012‘Historic Handweaving in Highlands Madagascar: New Insights From a Vernacular Text Attributed to a Royal Diviner Healer, c. 1870.’ Textile History 43(1): 62-84.
- 2011‘The Political Economy of an Art Form: the Akotifahana Cloth of Madagascar and Trade Networks in the Southwest Indian Ocean’, in Walter Little and Patricia Macaulney, eds., Textile Economies. Power and Value from the Local to the Transnational. Lanham: Altamira Press, pp. 77-100.
- 2011‘Not For Art’s Sake: An Early Exhibition of Pre-Columbiana at The Toledo Museum of Art, 1928-29.’ Museum Anthropology, Spring 34(1): 13-27.
- 2011‘Futa Benadir: A Somali Tradition Within the Folds of the Western Indian Ocean’, in Susan Cooksey ed., Africa Interweave. Textile Diasporas. Gainseville: University of Florida Harn Art Museum, pp. 120-127.
- 2009‘Recipes From the Past: Highland Textile Dyes in Nineteenth-century Merina sources' (with Bako Rasoarifetra), Etudes Océan Indien, 42-43:143-174.
