Cloth Mother
EXPERIENCE CLOTH MOTHER IN PERSON
Experience Cloth Mother live at Garver Feed Mill, Madison · 4–8 PM · Free & open to all
In the 1950s and 60s, psychologist Harry Harlow conducted controversial attachment experiments at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, studying what infant monkeys sought from their surrogate mothers. The experiments helped change how we understand comfort and attachment, while also raising serious questions about the ethics of animal research.
In 1997, nearly forty years later, two UW–Madison graduate students made their own version of Harlow’s cloth mother: a strange, human-sized sculpture built from sewer pipe, wood, carpet, and other materials. One of them was experiencing loneliness, and a friend documented the process through photographs and VHS video.
Nearly thirty years later, in 2026, the sculpture was about to be thrown away from a Boston storage locker. It was rescued and brought back to Madison, where it is now being restored and revisited through a new documentary and installation.
Cloth Mother brings together three generations and nearly seventy years of history. Harlow’s experiments, the people who built the sculpture in 1997, and the people encountering it today speak to one another across time, raising questions about attachment, loneliness, comfort, and the things we turn to when we need connection.
The installation combines the original Cloth Mother with archival photographs and VHS footage, new documentary material, sound, and historical context.
What do we cling to?
The documentary is currently in production.
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