During the last Saturday of the exhibition Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, visitors are invited to share their own experiences through an in-gallery activation with NYC-based artist and fashion designer Anna Lerner-Zwick.  Anna will be stationed in the exhibition gallery with fabric and pens that visitors may use to record their reflections on birth, motherhood, and caregiving.  These fabric pieces will be collected and later used to create an artwork as part of Anna's ongoing research project, Traces of Motherhood.  For her research, Lerner-Zwick is examining the ways in which motherhood is both a deeply personal and collective experience, one that encompasse care, community, and the shared desire to be seen and understood. 

This drop-in activation is free for all visitors to MAD, and visitors of all ages are invited to participate. 

About the artist

Anna Lerner-Zwick is a German fashion designer, researcher, and educator based in New York. Her practice operates at the intersection of fashion, textiles, and embodied experience, examining clothing as a site of care, labor, and social meaning. Grounded in material experimentation and critical research, her work explores themes of motherhood, birth, and female experience, foregrounding narratives that have historically been marginalized within design and society.

Alongside her creative practice, Anna holds a directorial leadership role in fashion education, where her work is informed by inclusive approaches to learning rooted in care, support, and the integration of lived, human experience within design pedagogy. Trained as a doula and lactation specialist, her close work with parents and caregivers directly informs her research-driven approach to design. Through garments, installations, and pedagogical projects, her work positions fashion as a medium for visibility, care, and collective reflection.