Adele Zhang, senior continuing lecturer in the Department of Design at UC Davis, has been the Jo Ann C. Stabb Design Collection curator and manager since 2006. After spending the last year researching the collection's archive, Zhang spent the first few weeks of 2025 packing up and shipping 134 objects to London, where they will be on display at the Fashion and Textile Museum from March 28 through September 7.

“I always like to take every opportunity to promote the collection,” said Zhang, who will be in London later this month to help set up the exhibition.

The exhibit, Textiles: The Art of Mankind, a version of which was previously on display at UC Davis, was curated by Zhang and Mary Schoeser, a design alum and author of a book of the same name.

A curator grows alongside her collection

The Design Collection was started in the 1960s with just a few pieces, which were used as teaching samples in home economics courses. In the 1980s, Jo Ann Stabb, a founding member of the UC Davis Department of Design, led the expansion of the collection to over 5,000 textile and costume objects from around the world. The collection was renamed in honor of Stabb, who was on faculty from 1968 - 2002 and passed in 2022.

Zhang’s personal journey at UC Davis began when she was a graduate student entering the design program in 1997. After graduating two years later, Zhang wanted to stay in Davis and quickly became a lecturer. When Zhang was asked to take on the role of museum curator and manager, at first, she wasn’t sure if she was ready for all the responsibility.

“I was nervous if I could handle this 5,000-object collection,” Zhang recalled. Overseeing the large collection was a new challenge for Zhang, but she was up for it. With support from Stabb and Professor Emerita Victoria Rivers, previous design chairs, as well as campus colleagues, Zhang grew into the position.

Pieces from the collection have been on display at the Design Museum at UC Davis and a few have been loaned out to be exhibited at outside museums, including the San Francisco International Airport Museum and the Oakland Museum of California.

Community support and impact

Not only has Zhang worked tirelessly to maintain and promote the Design Collection, this past year she held a successful fundraising campaign to help get the museum objects safely to London. She wanted to raise enough money to wrap each object in museum-grade packing materials and securely ship them.

Zhang, along with help from UC Davis business offices and in partnership with the Letters and Science Development and Alumni Relations team, started a crowdfunding campaign last year.

“We contacted the donors, then we promoted our exhibition and showed them the vision of why we are doing this,” Zhang said. “The support was tremendous, exceeding our goal.”

Zhang’s mark on the UC Davis campus community goes beyond her work with students and even the Design Collection’s international debut. She is the co-founder of the UC Davis Red Dress Collection, a campaign partnership between the UC Davis Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program and the Department of Design. Each year, she and her fashion design students create a collection of red dresses to raise awareness about heart disease as the leading cause of death among women.

Zhang designed a red dress for LeShelle May, the wife of UC Davis Chancellor Gary May, which she wore at last year’s Picnic Day Fashion Show as well as the Women’s Cardiovascular Medicine Program’s 30th anniversary gala.

That dress, along with some student and alumni work, will also be on display at the London exhibit.

“I'm so lucky to have this privilege to serve on this campus and work with these beautiful objects,” Zhang said. “I always say, I was made in China, then imported to UC Davis and then acquired by the Design Collection. I fell in love with Davis and I never left.”