What connects embroidery, textile production, posters, graphic design, and vinyl records? The needle. A tool capable of joining materials, piercing surfaces, creating images, and even reading a sound recording.
The exhibition Needle in a Haystack – Creative Industries in the Považie Region at the Dubnica Museum presents the creative potential of the region from the late 19th century to the present day. Rather than offering a nostalgic view of the past, it tells a story of continuity – from organised embroidery craftsmanship through industrial textile production and regional graphic culture to contemporary design, music, and technology-based creative work.
Visitors will discover the history of the Izabella Association and Dubnica embroidery, which, at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, was already part of an organised, export-oriented production system. This tradition is followed by contemporary work in fashion, jewellery, and textile design. The story continues in Trenčín, where the textile tradition associated with the Tiberghien and Merina factories demonstrates the region’s importance in industrial production and export.
Another section of the exhibition introduces Výtvarná Dubnica and the poster as an important record of the visual culture of several generations. The final section focuses on the present day – vinyl production in Trenčín, the graphic design of music releases, sound, and artistic installation. Here too, the needle reappears: this time as a record-player stylus, which, instead of fabric, “reads” the groove of a vinyl record.
The exhibition brings together objects from the collections of the Dubnica Museum, the Slovak National Museum – Museum of History, the Slovak Design Museum, the Moravian Gallery in Brno, and the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest with contemporary artistic work, showing that creativity does not emerge only in major cultural centres. The Považie region has a creative imprint of its own – and the exhibition reveals it through materials, patterns, images, technologies, and sound.
The exhibition also includes an accompanying programme for schools and the general public, creative workshops, guided tours, discussions, and conversations with artists and eyewitnesses.
Needle in a Haystack is an exhibition about what can be discovered when we take a closer look at the region’s creative past and present.
