Museum of International Folk Art November 17, 2024 – November 17, 2025. Santa Fe, New Mexico Foregrounding artists’ voices, Weaving Meanings shares histories of the wire medium in South Africa, from the 16th century uses as currency to the dazzling artworks wire weavers create today. From beer pot lids (izimbenge) to platters and plates, from […]

Afterlives explores the many lives of objects and what happens to textiles after they enter the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. From a child’s feed sack dress lovingly crafted and then saved on a family farm to an intricate robe from Turkmenistan that traveled halfway around the world, material things carry traces of people and things […]

This exhibition spotlights the rich artistic traditions of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia during the late 1800s and early 1900s, through a display of elaborate textiles and fine jewelry in the Museum’s collection, many on view for the first time. These works introduce the specialized skills of North African artists, both Amazigh (Berber) and Arab, Muslim […]

Exploring craft's collaborative practices, Craft Front & Center: Conversation Pieces brings pioneering twentieth-century craft artists into dialogue with contemporary artists who are rethinking craft techniques and materials. The exhibition draws from MAD's permanent collection and includes more than sixty historic, recently acquired, and commissioned works in a range of artistic media; most prominently, the central craft materials […]

Featuring forty-two textile works and oil paintings, Madalena Santos Reinbolt: A Head Full of Planets is the first comprehensive survey of Santos Reinbolt’s art ever presented, and the first-ever solo museum exhibition organized outside her native Brazil. Best known for her large-scale quadros de lã(“wool paintings”) made from hundreds of vibrant colored threads, the exhibition […]

Confluence of Nature: Nancy Hemenway Barton features twelve textile wall sculptures and five works on paper by artist Nancy Hemenway Barton (1920–2008), each an exploration of the stunning locations from around the world that informed and inspired her artistic process. Hemenway traveled the world, experiencing rich colorful cultural traditions from the Andean weavers in Bolivia to […]

In 2023, the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired thirty-five quilts from the collection of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. In 1981, Mazloomi founded the African American Quilt Guild of Los Angeles, and then, in 1985, she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network, fulfilling the desire of isolated makers to connect and continue Black textile traditions. The […]