The Institute has learned of the death of USITT Fellow and longtime active Member of USITT Whitney Blausen on Sept. 27, 2024. Blausen served the Institute in a variety of leadership capacities over the years. She was well-known as the first director of the TDF Costume Collection, a position she held for nearly 20 years, and later as an independent textile historian, writer, and researcher.

Trained at the right hand of Patricia Zipprodt during the original Broadway production of Pippin, Ms. Blausen was a favored costume designer throughout the 1970s, with her realism-entrenched work bringing to life The Changing Room, National Health, Mourning Pictures, Don't Call Back, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and Whodunnit, as well as the 1979 Off-Broadway premiere of Sam Shepard’s Seduced and the 1971 revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night starring Geraldine Fitzgerald, Stacey Keach, and James Naughton. She also contributed the profile of Zipprodt in the USITT monograph Late & Great: American Designers 1960-2010.

Her most robust legacy, however, comes from her work as the inaugural director of the TDF Costume Collection. When the collection was founded in 1974, it was Ms. Blausen who lept into action, organizing the collection's invaluable inventory. She single handedly supervised the facility’s move from Harlem to West 26th Street in 1976, and remained in her leading position until 1993, when Ms. Blausen left the collection to become an independent textile historian, writer, and researcher. 

Ms. Blausen is survived by the vibrant design community she bolstered, and the Collection she poured her spirit into. She will be deeply missed.