This week’s programs at The TM postponed

02/10/2010 — tmpressroom

The Textile Museum remains closed today due to inclement weather. Please visit the museum’s website or call 202-667-0441 for the most current information on opening status.

The Textile Museum has also rescheduled the following programs originally planned for this week:

LUNCHTIME GALLERY TALK
Sourcing the West
POSTPONED TO WEDNESDAY, FEB. 17, 12 PM
Led by Rebecca A.T. Stevens, Consulting Curator, Contemporary Textiles. Free; no reservations required.

EVENINGS AT THE TM
Creative Impulses: Japanese Fashion and Textiles
POSTPONED TO FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 6 PM
Presented by Yoshiko Wada. Fee: $20/members; $25/non-members. Advance registration required; space is limited. SOLD OUT. To be added to the waiting list, call (202) 667-0441, ext. 64. Evenings at The TM is sponsored by Eleanor T. Rosenfeld.

MEMBERS’ GALLERY TALK AND TOUR
The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection
POSTPONED TO SUNDAY, FEB. 21, 1 PM
Led by Associate Curator Lee Talbot. Free; reservations required. Call (202) 667-0441, ext. 64. Limited to 35 participants.

PUBLIC GALLERY TALK AND TOUR
The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection
POSTPONED TO SUNDAY, FEB. 21, 2 PM
Led by Associate Curator Lee Talbot. Free; no reservations required. Limited to 35 participants.

MATSURI: A MIDWINTER JAPANESE FESTIVAL FOR FAMILIES
POSTPONED TO SUNDAY, MARCH 7, 1-5 PM
This free festival offers hands-on art activities, demonstrations and performances for all ages. Free; no reservations required. Presented in cooperation with the Japan-America Society of Washington, D.C.

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Work by designer Lucienne Day, who died Jan. 30, on view in upcoming TM exhibition

02/04/2010 — tmpressroom
Lucienne Day

Lucienne Day in 1952. Image courtesy the Whitworth Art Gallery, the University of Manchester.

The Textile Museum was saddened to learn that designer Lucienne Day, whose work will be featured in The Textile Museum’s 2010 spring/summer exhibition, Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain, passed away on January 30, 2010 at the age of 93. Britain’s best known textile designer in the post-World War II period, Day created award-winning designs for wallpapers, tea towels, carpets and ceramics. She was especially renowned for her lively, colorful furnishing fabric patterns.

“Lucienne Day’s career was unparalleled,” said Lee Talbot, The Textile Museum’s Associate Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Collections and Coordinating Curator of Art by the Yard. “Her remarkable body of textile art remains a fresh source of artistic inspiration and visual delight, even into the 21st century. I am pleased that we will be able to celebrate her creative designs with our Art by the Yard exhibition.”

A graduate of the Croydon School of Art (1934-7) and the Royal College of Art (1937-1940), Day’s commercial success began with her groundbreaking fabric Calyx, printed in 1951 by Heal Fabrics. Although the manufacturer was initially skeptical about Calyx’s avant-garde design, they decided to take a chance with the young designer’s refreshing and innovative ideas. This proved to be a brilliant choice for Heal, as Day soon became the star in the new era of British design. Her strengths as a textile designer stemmed from her sophisticated color choices, stylized references to nature, abstract forms and intriguing patterns inspired by Modernist painters such as Joan Miró and Paul Klee. Color was critical to the perfectionist and accomplished Day, so she worked closely with Heal Fabrics to ensure that her vision was properly executed in each “colourway” version of the final product. Although she worked for other furnishing fabric firms, it was Heal Fabrics for whom she produced over 70 textile designs.

Helix, 1970, Lucienne Day

Helix, 1970, Lucienne Day. Collection of Jill A. Wiltse and H. Kirk Brown, III.

Lucienne Day and her husband, furniture designer Robin Day (b. 1915), were key arbiters of taste as Britain’s most celebrated designer couple and together they popularized a sleek new aesthetic in British interiors. The couple was featured in a 1954 advertisement for a Hillman family car and a 1955 ad campaign for Smirnoff vodka. Magazine articles, such as one in the January 1954 issue of House and Garden spotlighting the Day’s London townhouse, allowed eager fans and consumers to peruse their choices in home décor. Lucienne and Robin Day came to personify the modern style in mid-century Britain, and consumers strove to emulate the lifestyle of this talented, successful, and attractive couple. Like many designers in the optimistic post-WWII period, they both believed in modern design’s transformative power to shape a better world, and sought to create beautiful, useful objects accessible to people of all income levels.

Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain, on view at The Textile Museum May 15, 2010 through September 12, 2010, illustrates the evolution of Day’s design style over the decades, from the playful linearity of her patterns in the early 1950s, to her experimentation with bold visual effects using black silk-screen patterns over fields of color in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, and finally her dynamic Pop style of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Art by the Yard also includes textiles designed by two of Lucienne Day’s most accomplished contemporaries: Jacqueline Groag (1903-1985) and Marian Mahler (1911-1983).

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Upcoming TM Exhibit Features Textile Designed by the Late Artist Kenneth Noland

01/13/2010 — tmpressroom

A textile designed by the celebrated American abstract artist Kenneth Noland, who passed away on January 5, 2010, will be featured in an exhibition opening February 12, 2010 at The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C. The piece, Arizona Sky, dates to 1996 and was one of a series of tapestries designed by Noland and made by Navajo weavers.

Arizona Sky, woven by Mary Lee Begay and designed by Kenneth Noland

The textile will be featured in the exhibition The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection, on view at The Textile Museum February 12, 2010 through January 9, 2011. The exhibit highlights the historical and cultural breadth of the museum’s collection through the display of 17 furnishing fabrics, including rugs, chair covers, cushions, wall hangings, and other textiles used in domestic interiors. The Art of Living provides a historical context for the museum’s major spring/summer exhibition, Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain, which focuses on the careers of three 20th-century British designers and the socio-historical circumstances that informed their design choices.

Arizona Sky illustrates the collaborative effort between Noland (1924-2010), Navajo weaver Mary Lee Begay (1941- ), and tapestry producer Gloria F. Ross (1923-1998), who was also a trustee at The Textile Museum. Ross endeavored to heighten public appreciation of tapestry as an art form, bringing painters and weavers together to create outstanding works of textile art. In 1979, Ross began to work with Navajo weavers to create tapestries based on designs by Noland, whose bold geometric paintings she saw as well suited for Navajo looms and colors. Navajo weavers typically visualize their designs mentally, rarely committing them to paper, but for this unusual collaboration six Navajo weavers agreed to work from Noland’s painted designs. 

“The art world has lost an influential and inspiring figure with the passing of Kenneth Noland,” says Lee Talbot, The Textile Museum’s Associate Curator for Eastern Hemisphere Collections and exhibition curator for The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection. “We are proud to honor his legacy by showcasing his design in this exhibition.”

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Upcoming Exhibit Looks at Interior Design Fabrics from Around the World

12/08/2009 — tmpressroom
Tent Hanging

Tent hanging, Golconda, India, 1650 – 1780. The Textile Museum 6.129. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1947.

In February 2010, The Textile Museum will begin a year-long look at the role of fabrics in interior design with the opening of The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection. The exhibition highlights the historical and cultural breadth of the museum’s collection through the display of 17 furnishing fabrics, including rugs, chair covers, cushions, wall hangings, and other textiles used in domestic interiors. Made to provide protection and comfort, and to embellish homes from the ancient Mediterranean world to 20th-century America, these fabrics document the lifestyles enjoyed by their original owners as well as the technical and artistic accomplishment of their creators. The Art of Living: Textile Furnishings from the Permanent Collection will be on view February 12, 2010 through January 9, 2011.

About the Exhibition

The Art of Living explores how homes and furnishings shape the human experience of everyday life, and how each culture creates living environments that reflect its own social traditions, aesthetic preferences, political and economic circumstances, and local climate. The exhibition focuses particularly on the design of textile furnishings and the people who created their ornamental patterns. “Although one maker’s talented hands may produce a textile from fiber to finished product, more often the combined skills of many people—from spinners, dyers and designers to weavers or embroiderers—create the finished cloth,” explains exhibition curator Lee Talbot, associate curator for Eastern Hemisphere Collections at The Textile Museum. 

The Art of Living provides a historical context for the museum’s major spring/summer exhibition, Art by the Yard: Women Design Mid-Century Britain, which focuses on the careers of three 20th-century British designers and the socio-historical circumstances that informed their design choices. The Art of Living sheds light on these women’s forebears—the talented artists who created textile patterns in centuries past.

Exhibition Highlights

The earliest textile in The Art of Living is a 5th-century tapestry-woven fragment found in Egypt, which may have covered a bolster pillow. In the Roman and Byzantine Empires, as in many urban cultures around the world, professional artists drew designs on paper to be adapted for a variety of media. A few of their drawings on papyrus have survived, some of which appear to be cartoons for tapestry woven fabrics. This fragment features scrolling vines, rosettes and birds—motifs developed by artists in the Mediterranean world but adopted by designers worldwide. 

An 11th- or 12th-century Chinese silk documents how the naturalistic rendering of bird and flower patterns, as well as the tapestry technique, spread along the Silk Road from the West to East Asia. Like their counterparts in the West, Chinese artists typically drew cartoons for tapestries and designs for other fine decorative arts on paper. With the export of silks and ceramics, the flower and animal patterns developed over the centuries by Chinese artists became some of the most influential designs in the world. In this exhibition, a throne cover from Bhutan appliquéd with bird and flower patterns and a colonial Peruvian wall hanging fragment depicting phoenixes and peonies illustrate the global reach of these decorative motifs.

The Designers

Although the names of very few textile designers from the ancient world are known today, surviving records from 18th century onward, particularly in Western countries, more readily link the names of individual artists to particular designs. Four textiles in The Art of Living can be attributed to known designers: Ghiyath al-Din Ali, a designer/weaver who achieved high rank at the court of Abbas I (1571-1629) in Iran; William Morris (1834-1896), the seminal 19th-century British designer; and Kenneth Noland (1924- ), an American abstract painter who provided designs for a series of tapestries woven by Navajo weavers. Bridging Art by the Yard with The Art of Living is a special loan from the Cora Gingsberg Gallery—an exquisite silk designed Anna Maria Garthwaite (1690–1763), one of Britain’s most prolific and highly regarded textile designers of the 18th century. 

Whether anonymous or highly celebrated, the designers represented in The Art of Living enhanced the daily lives of the people who originally used these beautifully patterned fabrics in their homes, and they continue to delight viewers today with their artistry.

For more information or images, please contact Cyndi Bohlin at (202) 667-0441, ext. 78, or by e-mail at cbohlin@textilemuseum.org.

For more information, or to view the press release, CLICK HERE (pdf)

To see selections from the exhibition, CLICK HERE (pdf)

To request images for press use online, CLICK HERE

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The Textile Museum’s Activity Gallery Closed December 8 – 25 for Refurbishment

12/08/2009 — tmpressroom

The Textile Museum’s Activity Gallery will be closed December 8-25, 2009 for refurbishment. Located on the museum’s second level, the Activity Gallery was created in 1997 to educate visitors unfamiliar with textiles about how they are made and the ways in which cultural traditions, the environment and even the economy influence the character of handmade textiles.

In the Activity Gallery, visitors are encouraged to learn by touching, looking and doing. Touchable textiles ranging from a pile carpet to bark cloth illustrate the structures, techniques and processes used to create traditional textiles. Samples of fibers in various stages of processing (from silk worm cocoons to silk thread) and examples of dyestuffs (including crushed bugs!) are used to explain how natural fibers are prepared for weaving and how color has been imparted to fiber for thousands of years.

The refurbishment is intended to update the Activity Gallery and create a more flexible space that can accommodate exhibit-related hands-on activities for school groups and visiting families. “Through the generous support of a private donor, we are able to make changes in the Activity Gallery that will better serve our youth and family audiences,” explains Tom Goehner, the museum’s curator of education. “We plan to move the kiosks in the center of the gallery to the perimeters, and then add tables for hands-on projects and textile making.” This the first phase of the gallery refurbishment; the long-term goals are to incorporate an introductory video about the textile arts and additional computers, creating links between technology of the 21st century and handmade textile traditions stemming back thousands of years.

For more information, or to view the press release, CLICK HERE (pdf)

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Contemporary Fabrics from the Nuno Corporation on view at The Textile Museum this Fall

08/19/2009 — tmpressroom

Reiko Sudo

The Textile Museum will present  Fabrics of Feathers and Steel: The Innovation of Nuno, October 17, 2009 – April 11, 2010 to complement the couture designs on display in the concurrent exhibition Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Mary Baskett Collection. Nuno (meaning “functional fabric” in Japanese) integrates traditional techniques and aesthetics with cutting-edge technologies to create some of the world’s most innovative and influential fabrics. Made out of materials as varied as steel, bamboo and bird feathers, Nuno textiles provide the starting point for fashion designers and are housed in museum collections around the world.

The Nuno Studio

The international success of Japanese fashion designers owes much to the talented textile designers and manufacturers who enable their creative visions. Japan maintains a particularly rich textile tradition, and in recent decades has emerged as the world’s leading producer of technologically advanced fabrics. Founded by Junichi Arai and Reiko Sudo in 1984, Nuno has been under the direction of Sudo since 1987 and has developed from selling traditional Japanese textiles to applying handmade techniques in innovative ways. Following the mantra “Why Knot?,” Nuno experiments with an eclectic array of materials, as well as unorthodox finishing methods, such as burnishing, burning and chemical dissolving to produce their fabrics. Everyday materials such as steel and cotton are transformed by hand and machine into ethereal and compelling textiles that are renowned around the world. Deftly interweaving the traditional and the experimental, hand production and machine-made, Nuno creates beautiful and often conceptually witty fabrics that reassert the rich artistic potential of the textile medium.

About the Exhibition

The exhibition at The Textile Museum will feature 18 examples from the Nuno studio, dating from the time of the company’s founding in 1984 to the present day. The fabrics will be hung in galleries adjacent to the showing of Contemporary Japanese Fashion: The Collection of Mary Baskett, inviting visitors to experience the design process from start to finish – from structure to style. “In contrast to their Western counterparts, Japanese designers usually begin with the fabric, or even the thread, as the starting point in their design process. Innovative textile technolgies such as those pioneered by Nuno have been pivotal in creating the distinctive forms characteristic of Japanese fashion, so these two exhibitions complement each other in an exciting and very meaningful way,” says Lee Talbot, associate curator for Eastern Hemisphere Collections at The Textile Museum. Maryclaire Ramsey, CEO of The Textile Museum says, “We are excited to be opening these two exhibitions this fall – and feel they are both relevant in a city with a growing high-fashion scene and a strong international presence.” The Textile Museum Fall Symposium, “From Kimono to Couture: The Evolution of Japanese Fashion,” October 16 to 19, 2009, will continue on themes from both shows and will feature lectures by leading scholars in the fashion field from around the country.

For more information, or to view the press release CLICK HERE (pdf)

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The Textile Museum Partners with D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities for American Masterpieces Project

08/14/2009 — tmpressroom

The Textile Museum is proud to announce its partnership with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities for The American Quilt: Weaving the District’s Future, an American Masterpieces project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. The program aims to draw attention to the importance of quilting as a treasured American masterpiece and educate participants on how quilting tradition serves as a way of documenting history and examining social circumstance.

The American Quilt: Weaving the District’s Future consists of free adult and youth workshops led by Pat Autenrieth, a local quilter, mixed media artist and associate professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington D.C. in addition to a special guest lecture by world renowned artist Faith Ringgold titled Story Quilts: an American History. The hands-on workshops, open to all District residents, will be held at citywide, Metro-accessible venues from September 9-19, 2009. During the workshops, participants will create quilt squares that represent their individual visions. The project will culminate in the unveiling of a dynamic community quilt, comprised of these individual quilt squares, on September 28, 2009 at The Textile Museum. The quilt will remain on view at the museum for one week. During this time, workshop participants, as well as visitors to The Textile Museum, will have the opportunity to rearrange the quilt squares, creating an ever-changing design that embraces individual diversity, cooperation and flexibility. After it is exhibited at The Textile Museum, the community quilt will be added to the D.C. Commission’s Art Bank Collection.

In addition to the adult and youth workshops, The American Quilt: Weaving the District’s Future features a dynamic, crowd-sourcing website, www.theamericanquilt2009.com, where
people of all ages and artistic backgrounds are invited to participate in a special online contest. To enter the contest, website visitors should upload their ideas for quilt squares between now and September 11, 2009, then rank their favorite designs from those submitted. The top five quilt square ideas will become part of the community quilt exhibited at The Textile Museum, and the winning designers will be invited to attend a special VIP quilt-making workshop led by Pat Autenrieth. They will also receive complimentary memberships to The Textile Museum and a copy of the book Contemporary Quilt Art: An Introduction and Guide by quilter and author Kate Lenkowsky. Additionally, the top winner will be awarded a gift certificate to The Textile Museum Shop.

“We are so pleased to work with the D.C. Commission on this extraordinary project,” said Maryclaire Ramsey, The Textile Museum’s chief executive officer. “By encouraging participants to learn about quilting firsthand, the project speaks directly to our mission—to expand awareness of the artistry and the cultural importance of textiles.”

Those who wish to participate in the workshops must apply through the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Applications from quilting professionals, artists, and youth ages 12 to 17 are being accepted. All events are free and open to the public pending application approval and space availability. Applications can also be obtained by contacting the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities by phone at (202) 724-5613 or through the Commission’s website, http://dcarts.dc.gov.

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President Obama’s Sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Visits the TM for Exhibition Opening Event

08/10/2009 — tmpressroom

On Sunday, August 9, Maya Soetoro-Ng, President Obama’s sister, joined the Ambassador of Indonesia, Textile Museum Board President Bruce P. Baganz, CEO Maryclaire Ramsey and other distinguished guests for a private brunch at The Textile Museum to celebrate the opening of A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama’s Mother and Indonesian Batiks.

The museum’s classic marble foyer, overlooking the garden, provided a beautiful setting for guests to mingle and enjoy refreshing white sangria and juice. At noon, as Soetoro-Ng arrived, guests were invited to enter the museum’s elegant Myers Room to see the exhibition and hear remarks. 

Bruce P. Baganz, president of The Textile Museum Board of Trustees, began the program with welcoming remarks, explaining the museum’s mission—to “expand public knowledge and appreciation of the textile arts.” Maryclaire Ramsey, the museum’s new chief executive officer, then took to the podium, saying “Today we celebrate our friendship with Indonesians and a remarkable woman, Ann Dunham, whose pieces we see here in A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama’s Mother and Indonesian Batiks.”

Following her remarks, Ramsey introduced Mattiebelle Gittinger, The Textile Museum’s research associate and “the world’s leading scholar on Southeast Asian and South Asian textiles.” Gittinger curated the exhibition and will be honored with the museum’s George Hewitt Myers Award this fall in recognition of her lifetime achievement and exceptional contributions furthering the field of textile arts. Gittinger spoke of Ann Dunham as a woman who deeply understood and appreciated Indonesian culture.

Gittinger then invited Soetoro-Ng to share her personal insight into her mother’s love of batik. Soetoro-Ng said her mother, an anthropologist who lived in Indonesia with her young son Barack Obama in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “would be honored” to see her collection recognized in this way. Soetoro-Ng—who arrived in Washington only two days prior to the event—also expressed her gratitude at the warm welcome her family has received.

To close the event program, a representative of the Cita Tenun Indonesia, the Indonesian Hand-Woven Association, presented Maryclaire Ramsey with a richly colored, 100-year-old Indonesian batik—a beautiful gift for The Textile Museum. Guests then enjoyed a sumptuous brunch while seated in the museum’s elegantly paneled Garrett Room or in the garden, stopping to enjoy a traditional batik demonstration. Following the brunch, the museum—and the exhibition—officially opened to the public.

This event followed a festive gala dinner held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Saturday, August 8, presented by the Indonesian Embassy and the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board, and made possible in part by The Textile Museum, the U.S.-Indonesia Society (USINDO), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the USASEAN Business Council and the Asia Society.

The gala event featured the display of the Ann Dunham batik collection as well as traditional Indonesian textiles provided by the Cita Tenun Indonesia, the Indonesian Hand-Woven Association. During the dinner program, guests enjoyed a fashion show by one of the two top young Indonesian designers—Priyo Octaviano—as well as performances of traditional Indonesian dance and an exotic angklung orchestra. A special treat was the saxophone performance of the Indonesian Ambassador himself.

The exhibition A Lady Found a Culture in its Cloth: Barack Obama’s Mother and Indonesian Batiks, will remain on view at The Textile Museum through August 23, 2009.

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TM Honors Mattiebelle Gittinger

04/30/2009 — tmpressroom

April 30, 2009-

Mattiebelle Gittinger Awarded 2009 George Hewitt Myers Award

The Textile Museum announced today that Mattiebelle Gittinger, one of the foremost researchers and scholars in the field of Southeast Asian textiles, has been chosen as the 2009 recipient of the Museum’s George Hewitt Myers Award, one of the highest accolades in the field of textile arts. The Myers Award, named for The Textile Museum’s founder and
given by the Museum’s Board of Trustees, recognizes an individual’s lifetime achievements and exceptional contributions to the field.

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TM Promotes Two Curators

04/27/2009 — tmpressroom

April 27, 2009-

The Textile Museum Promotes Two Curators

The Textile Museum announced today that Sumru Belger Krody has been promoted to curator and Lee Talbot has been promoted to associate curator, of the Eastern Hemisphere Collections. Krody will continue to head the department and to pursue curatorial work in her area of expertise, including researching and cataloguing the museum’s collection of Islamic and Late Antique textiles, developing exhibitions, producing scholarly materials and interpreting the Museum’s collection through educational programs, and chairing the
Museum’s staff Research, Publication, Library and Education task force. Talbot will continue to chair the Museum’s internal Exhibitions Task Force, acting as a liaison to the Board of Trustees, and to pursue
curatorial work focused on the Museum’s collection of textiles from Korea, China and Japan through exhibitions, publications and programs.

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