Internationally acclaimed textile designer and authority on craft Jack Lenor Larsen will speak at a fall benefit lunch at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. The benefit, A Single Thread: Celebrating Native American Design and Style, will be held Thursday,

Sept. 25, from 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. and will support the museum’s education programs and activities. The event also includes preview tours of the museum’s exhibition “Identity by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses.”

The luncheon will honor the achievements of beadworker Joe Baker (Delaware Tribe of Indians); master dressmaker Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty (Assiniboine/Sioux); fashion designer Dorothy Grant (Haida); jewelry artist Veronica Poblano (Zuni); and jewelry artist Denise Wallace (Chugach/Aleut). The co-chairs of the benefit committee are Lois Sherr Dubin, Vivian Henderson and Valerie Rowe.

Individual tickets start at $250, and table prices start at $5,000. For more information, please contact Lucia DeRespinis at (212) 514-3828 or derespinisl@si.edu.

Larsen is one of the world’s foremost advocates of traditional and contemporary crafts. Known as an innovator in fabric design, he has won many awards, and his is one of only two design houses ever to be honored with an exhibition at the Palais du Louvre.

The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center is located at One Bowling Green in New York City, across from Battery Park. The museum is free and open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Dec. 25, and Thursdays until 8 p.m. Call (212) 514-3700 for general information and (212) 514-3888 for a recording about the museum’s public programs. By subway, the museum may be reached by the 1 to South Ferry, the 4 or 5 to Bowling Green or the R or W to Whitehall Street. The museum’s Web site is www.americanindian.si.edu.

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