University of North Texas 
TFC Staff
Annette Becker
Texas Fashion Collection Director and Curator
Annette.Becker@unt.edu | 940-565-2732
Welch Street Complex #1, Room 103
Areas of Expertise: 19th- and 20th-century fashion and material culture, museology.
About
Annette Becker joined the TFC staff in September 2016. She has a B.A. in Art History and English from the University of Kansas, an M.A. in Art History from the University of North Texas, Denton, and previous work experiences at art and history museums around the country.
At the TFC, Becker has curated the exhibitions "Delight: Selections from the Texas Fashion Collection" at the CVAD Gallery, “Reimagining the Kimono,” "West Dressed" at NorthPark Center, “Sportswear to Athleisure: The Creation of Comfortable Clothing” at UNT ArtSpace, and “On Bodies” at The Goss-Michael Foundation, all in Dallas. To promote accessibility to the collection, she also regularly speaks to university classes and community groups and facilitates research visits engaging the TFC's holdings of nearly 20,000 historical and designer garments and accessories.
Read more about Becker: Voyage Dallas, Jan. 10, 2018: Meet Annette Becker
Image: Annette Becker, director and curator, Texas Fashion Collection; photo by Elizabeth Lanvin, D Magazine
Ailie Pankonien
Collection Manager
940-565-4962
Ailie.Pankonien@unt.edu
405 S. Welch St., WSCI, Room 102
Denton, TX 76201
About
As collection manager, Ailie Pankonien focuses on internal-facing projects that closely relate to collection care and stewardship, ensuring the longevity and accessibility of TFC holdings.
To improve accessibility to the TFC artifacts, Pankonien leads an ongoing digitization project. This large-scale initiative requires weekly preparation of artifacts for digitization, training and collaborating with students who mount and photograph artifacts, managing media files, and partnering with the UNT Digital Libraries to make images and metadata findable. This initiative has provided impactful professional development for student staff and interns, and it has also garnered the financial support of individual donors and grant funding through the Heart of Neiman Marcus Foundation.
To ensure the TFC’s artifacts are handled and documented appropriately, Pankonien meticulously maintains best practices established by museums and archives. She executes regular collection care activities, such as conducting condition reports, preparing objects for loans, creating and administering internal object records, and finding storage solutions for all artifacts. She is committed to ongoing research dedicated to improving the collection's accessibility through methods of organization, description and care.
Pankonien joined the TFC staff in 2022. Her multidisciplinary background informs her varied work at the TFC. Her intellectual engagement with the TFC’s holdings is informed by her art historical training, first through a B.A. in Art History from UNT and later an M.A. in Library Science from the University of Colorado Boulder. Following this education, Pankonien gained hands-on experience at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Colorado University Art Museum, the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Pankonien’s deep knowledge of collections-based practices is shaped by graduate training in library science at UNT; through that program, Pankonien was first introduced to the TFC, completed a graduate practicum and graduate area assistantship at the TFC, and also worked at the UNT Digital Project Lab, part of the UNT Digital Libraries.
To browse the TFC’s holdings on the UNT Digital Library, visit the Explore Collections web page.
To see behind-the-scenes images of TFC collection digitization, visit the UNT Digital Library.