For 15 years, exhibits have come and gone. Thousands of visitors have shuffled through the galleries. Even the leadership has changed hands.

And all the while, Mary Dusenbury has been working quietly behind the scenes at the Spencer Museum of Art, unearthing a precious collection packed in boxes and accessible only by ladder.

Inside were 300 textiles from across Asia, some woven as long as six centuries ago. When the odyssey started in 1990, then-director Andrea Norris only expected Dusenbury to choose two or three of the best pieces and write about them.

“As we began to get into it, we realized that it was really a very good collection,” says Dusenbury, now guest curator of Asian art at the Spencer. “The breadth of what was there, the beauty of the pieces, their interest, the fact, for example, that you could almost tell the whole history of the development of Kashmir shawls through works in the collection.”

More than a decade of careful research, cleaning, conserving and photographing this little-known portion of the museum’s holdings culminates Saturday, when “Flowers, Dragons & Pine Trees” opens in the Kress Gallery. Ninety pieces from India, Iran, China and Japan will be on view through May 28.

“I’m feeling really pleased that this wonderful collection that’s really, in many ways, been a hidden collection for most of the 20th century, is not only seeing the light of day, but seeing it with the honor it deserves,” Dusenbury says.

• An exhibition of 90 pieces from the Spencer Museum of Art’s Asian textiles collection: ‘Flowers, Dragons & Pine Trees’

Meticulous care

The textiles – which include Persian velvets and brocades, Kashmir shawls, embroideries of northwest India and Pakistan, Chinese court costume and Japanese costume, furnishings and festival textiles – date from the 15th to the late 20th centuries.

Working with a Los Angeles-based conservator, it’s been exhibition designer Richard Klocke’s task to display the precious items without harming them. Small fragments of Iranian textiles are gingerly stitched to fabric backgrounds, then matted and framed. Acid-free tubes jut out from gallery walls, with pieces capable of sustaining their own weight draped over them. T-shaped bar systems – like makeshift mannequins – provide a 3-D display for garments.

Even with the meticulous attention paid to caring for the textiles, perhaps the most difficult job for Klocke has been getting all 90 pieces into the gallery.

“I knew that it would be quite a challenge to get it all to fit,” he says. “We’ve pretty much used every available foot of wall space. Everybody should be able to find something they like.”

Historical documents

One of the aspects that most intrigues Dusenbury about the objects in the show is how they document cultural interaction through trade.

She traces, as an example, the evolution of the Kashmir shawl, which started as a narrow band of high-quality fiber, sparsely decorated with flower forms and worn by men in India’s royal court. As the shawls made their way to Europe, they became popular women’s garments, first worn by the very wealthy and then the middle class by the 1860s and ’70s.

“There was an increased emphasis on patterning; the cones (paisleys) became bigger and the backgrounds got filled in until there were these huge, swirling abstract forms which are almost unrecognizable as flowers,” Dusenbury says. “Meanwhile, European weavers using Jacquard looms were imitating these at a lower cost in Britain and France and Germany. … There was a really lively interplay back and forth for most of the 19th century.”

There is much to be learned by studying this collection, Dusenbury continues.

“Many things in material culture can tell us a huge amount about everything that was going on, the way people see themselves, what’s happening in society, what’s happening in science,” she says. “I think that people often don’t pay a whole lot of attention to textiles because we’re so familiar with them. They seem so close to us that we don’t see them as important or informative as they actually are.

“One thing I’m hoping to do with this exhibition and the programming we’ve done around it is to bring our attention back to the importance of these things, not just as really fine art, but as objects that can tell us a huge amount.”

Museum transformation

“Flowers, Dragons & Pine Trees” will dominate the Spencer’s spring programming. In that spirit, the museum will be transformed to focus on the show.

A miniature pine forest and giant dragon banners will greet visitors at the front doors. Gold paint will coat surfaces in the entry hallway and Central Court. Poetry written in response to objects in the collection will be on display, with new writing rotating in throughout the semester.

Items from the permanent collection will be absent from the Central Court. In their place, yards and yards of indigo-dyed fabric created by Kansas University students will be draped from balconies and elsewhere.

“Indigo is a process that’s used all over Asia, so it ties in with the theme of the exhibition,” says textiles professor Mary Anne Jordan, who, along with textiles professor David Brackett, is supervising the student project. She’s excited about having student work in the museum.

“A lot of them have talked about bringing their families to come and see it. It’s a way of including the community and including people who are important to the museum,” Jordan says. “I think it helps to engage people who might not otherwise be there.”

That’s also the goal of the children’s and family programming planned around the exhibit, says education coordinator Kristina Mitchell. We all could stand to learn a bit more about the countries represented in the show.

“I think it’s so important to show the cultural context of Iran, for example,” she says. “There’s so much politically going on that you forget there’s a lot of nonpolitical activity, and these people have such a rich cultural history, an artistic history. And this is such a great way to showcase that.”