Your Monthly Calendar of World Textile Events
This Month's Featured Event
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Global Textile Events
Your Monthly Calendar of World Textile Events
National Mall Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Armenia: Creating Home; Catalonia: Tradition and Creativity from the Mediterranean
June 27–July 1 and July 4–8, 2018
Washington, D.C. Learn More
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival honors contemporary living cultural traditions and celebrates those who practice and sustain them. Produced annually by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Festival has featured participants from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. This year’s festival will present two concurrent programs exploring the ways creative enterprises, such as artisan crafts, foster intergenerational learning, stimulate economies, and anchor cultural identities. The Festival will feature two regions this year: Armenia and Catalonia.
In addition to myriad activities and celebrations, a Festival Marketplace will be open on the mall daily. The market honors the creativity, cultural heritage, and masterful artisanal skills of festival participants. Pottery, jewelry, embroidery work, woven baskets, and other traditional handicrafts from Armenia and Catalonia will be available. The pop-up International Folk Art Market allows visitors to meet master artists from fifteen countries and to purchase extraordinary handmade folk art. Purchases supports artist and artisan groups but also contribute to the sustained development of traditional crafts worldwide and, ultimately, the mission of the Smithsonian.
All photos courtesy of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Western New Mexico University
Festival Latina
June 22–24. 2018
Silver City, New Mexico Learn More
The festival includes the Artisan Mercado featuring traditional master artisans from all across Mexico in addition to a music stage with free entertainment throughout the weekend, and an exciting new event this year, the Transcending Border film/discussion series, featuring documentaries of five visiting artisans.
Royal Ontario Museum
Fashion & Textiles Lecture Series
June–July, 2018
Toronto, Canada Learn More
Thought-provoking lectures offered throughout the summer. June 1: “Journeys In Indigo—Red Sea To Rajasthanby Jenny Balfour-Paul”; June 29: A Revolution in the Bedroom—How Indian Dyed Cottons Transformed Europe’s Interiors in the 17th And 18th Centuriesby Rosemary Crill”; July 6: Spider Silk—A Golden Opportunity by Simon Peers.
Museum Hill
15th Anniversary of the International Folk Art Market
July 13–15, 2018
Santa Fe, New Mexico Learn More
Tickets are now on sale for this world-famous international market organized by the International Folk Art Alliance (IFFA), bringing together more than150 master artists from 53 countries to sell their work and share their culture.
ULITA, Archive of International Textiles
Resists: Exploring Resist-dyed Textiles across Cultures
April 25–December 13, 2018
Leeds, England Learn More
The exhibition presents examples of the principal resist-dyeing techniques, including batik, ikat, resist block printing, stencils, tie-dye, and other stitched techniques and will feature of samples of ajrakh, English Wax, katagami, and shibori. The exhibition particularly showcases two recent collections to come to ULITA: the Coleman Indonesian Collection and the West African O’Hear Collection.
Houston Center for Contemporary Craft
Rooted, Revived, Reinvented: Basketry in America
June 2–September 2, 2018
Houston, Texas Learn More
An exhibition chronicling the history of American basketry, from its origins in Native American, immigrant, and slave communities to its presence within the contemporary fine-art world. Image: Lois Russell, “Magic Bus,” 2012. Waxed linen. Courtesy of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft.
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Miao Clothing and Jewelry from China
November 4, 2017–July 1, 2018
Minneapolis, Minnesota Learn More
For the Miao people of southern China, elaborate festival costumes and silver adornments are the most important forms of visual art, and their embroidery and indigo-dyeing techniques are renowned. This exhibition features nearly 50 examples from Institute’s collection of more than 1,200 textiles and 450 pieces of jewelry made in the last century by Miao artists
Estes Park Events Center
Estes Park Wool Market
June 7–June 10, 2018
Estes Park, Colorado http://www.estesparkeventscomplex.com/wool-market.html
Now in its 28th year, festival-goers can experience all stages in the life of fiber, from its origins on the animals themselves to raw fleeces, spinning, and the creation of beautiful textiles. The Festival offers competitions, workshops, and merchandise vendors, including ClothRoads.
Textile Tour Highlight
Textiles of Lao
January 16-31, 2019
Join Valerie Kirk, senior lecturer and head of textiles at Australian National University, on a journey from the cultural center of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, across the Mekong into the beautiful country of Laos, the home for many minority people who still produce and wear colorful fabrics using generation’s old techniques. You’ll meet local artisans as well as internationally acclaimed practitioners. Plus workshops will provide hands-on experience, and of course galleries, shops and village markets provide opportunities for collectors.
Smithsonian Freer/Sackler Galleries
To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia
March 24–July 29, 2018
Washington, D.C. Learn More
About thirty of the finest historical Central Asian ikat hangings and coats from the Freer and Sackler collections as well as seven of Oscar de la Renta’s iconic creations will be on view. The aim of the exhibition is to explore the original use and function of these exquisite fabrics and the enduring appeal of their extraordinary designs.
The process of creating ikats involved collaboration among different communities. Bundles of threads are patterned by repeated binding and resist dyeing before being woven into narrow strips and immersed into sequential vats of color. In multi-ethnic 19th-century Central Asia, each “group” played a different role in the process. The Jews were responsible for importing and dyeing indigo, while the Tajiks were in charge of dyeing yellow-and red. The Uzbeks served as the weavers, who turned the brightly colored threads into the textiles seen in the exhibition.
The finished ikats are more than ornate fabrics. Transformed into brightly colored panels or sumptuous robes for men and women, they are works of art. The panels or curtains added colorful accents to the mud-brick architecture of Central Asia, while the coats were striking statement items that adorned wealthy men and women. Worn on special occasions as status symbols, they functioned in the same way as many of de la Renta-designer garments do today.
The majority of the ikats on display are from 19th-century Uzbekistan. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, rare ikat fabrics once concentrated in Central Asia began spreading to the West, explains curator Massumeh Farhad. Ikat then caught the eye of contemporary fashion designers, such as Oscar de la Renta and the Italian fashion house Etro, in the late 1990s, and has steadily gained popularity since.
The textiles are accompanied by a slideshow of images that give viewers insight to the environment and times that fostered the creation of these extraordinary pieces.
(Top) Woman’s silk and cotton robe, Central Asia, late 19th century. All photos courtesy of the Freer/Sackler Gallery.
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence
May 12–September 17, 2018
Cedar Rapids, Iowa Learn More
This exhibition showcases a form of bead art, ndwangos, developed by a community of women living and working together in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The artisans embellish Czech glass beads over black fabric. The Ubuhle community was established to create employment for rural women.
Weave A Real Peace (WARP)
Annual Meeting
June 7–10, 2018
Decorah, Iowa Learn More
Researchers, anthropologists, artisans, and textile partners join WARP members to present new possibilities for increasing support of artisans through advocacy and collaboration.
China National Silk Museum
A World of Looms: Weaving Technology and Textile Arts in China and Beyond
May 30––September 15, 2018
Hangzhou, China Learn More
This is the first exhibition in China to present the rich cultural heritage of looms and weaving technologies from around the world. It celebrates the marches of textile innovations in not only China, but also in a broader context of textile traditions over vast geographical areas.
Art Institute of Chicago
Music and Movement: Rhythm in Textile Design
May 18–October 21, 2018
Chicago, Illinois Learn More
Featuring a selection of 17th- through 20th-century works made in countries including Brazil, Finland, France, Japan, and the United States, the exhibition highlights the global nature of the Art Institute’s collection and invites visitors to consider how rhythm informs textile design. Image: Furoshiki (Wrapping Cloth), early Shôwa period (1926–89), 1926/35. Japan. Photo courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Fashioned from Nature
April 21–January 27, 2019
London, England Learn More
This exhibition will present fashionable dress alongside natural history specimens, innovative new fabrics, and dyeing processes, inviting visitors to think about the materials of fashion and the sources of their clothes. Image: Rose-patterned silk train (detail). Circa 1890s. ©Victoria and Albert Museum.
Textile Tour Highlight
Mexico City & Oaxaca: Designers & Artisans
September 27–October 8, 2018
Discover the exciting confluence of old and new Mexico and gain a deeper understanding of this vivid, richly-layered country. Explore how designers and artisans are working to create an original, modern Mexican aesthetic rooted in the country’s traditional textile and handcraft traditions—both indigenous and mestizo. This is not your typical trip to Mexico.
Guided by Ana Paula Fuentes, a Mexico City native and the founding director of the Museo Textil de Oaxaca, you’ll visit the studios and showrooms of urban textile designers and explore the remote Mixteca Region of Oaxaca where people still make and wear traditional textiles. The trip concludes in delightful Oaxaca City known for its weaving and craft centers, stunning pre-hispanic archeological sites, and vibrant cultural and food scene.
For details, visit two fold travel. Learn More
http://twofoldtravel.com/mexico-2018/
Museum of International Folk Art
Beadwork Adorns the World
April 22–February 3, 2019
Santa Fe, New Mexico Learn More
The ultimate migrants, small glass beads travel the world and end up entering the cultural lives of people far away. This April, the Museum of International Folk Art opens the exhibition, Beadwork Adorns the World, exploring the transitory path of beads. Whether these extraordinary glass beads originated from the island of Murano in Venice, Italy or the mountains of Bohemia, where they start out is seldom where they end up. Artisans in their new locale make them into something specific to their own world view.
Very few cultures have ever lived in total isolation from other peoples. Contact with others beyond the immediate community allows for new markets and new uses for beadwork, as well as opportunities to survive creatively.
In most parts of the world, beads are highly valued and are used to mark peak moments in life. With their luster and sparkle used as an adornment or surface additive, they help to heighten the effect, the impact, the meaning. These special moments in the life of the community tend to revolve around life stages and passages, such as birth; becoming an adult; marriage and death; power, position, or status in the community; and communication with the spirits.
Much of the exhibition has been created from the Museum’s extensive collection, but curator Marsha Bol has arranged loans of other pieces from the Field Museum, UCLA’s Fowler Museum, the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and several private collections. Not all beads in the exhibit are made of glass. Some are constructed from metal, cloth, shell, stone, and other materials.
Backstage exhibition tours, running through mid-April, will take visitors into the workshops and restricted areas of the Museum to get a first-hand look at the exhibit development process. Additionally, publication of a companion book The Art & Tradition of Beadwork will be released concurrent with the exhibition opening.
Top: China poblana blouse, 1935. Mexico cotton, glass beads. All photos courtesy of the Museum of International Folk Art.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Fashioned from Nature
April 21–January 27, 2019
London, England Learn More
This exhibition will present fashionable dress alongside natural history specimens, innovative new fabrics and dyeing processes, inviting visitors to think about the materials of fashion and the sources of their clothes. Image: Mantua and petticoat of white brocaded silk, 1733-1734. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
11th International Shibori Symposium
June 26–July 29, 2018
Japan Learn More
The 11th International Shibori Symposium spans three regions of Japan, exploring legacies of craft and local industry in three different regions. Call for Entry for International Student Competition open now, closes May 24, 2018. Students across the globe present innovative 2D and 3D art inspired by material manipulation and cutting-edge technical application, pushing the boundaries of contemporary art.
Textile Tour Highlight
Textile Traditions of Bhutan
December 12–29, 2018 Learn More
This magical journey will wind through fertile valleys and villages, traversing the country to reach the little-visited textile heartland of “kushutara” in Eastern Bhutan. This trip is designed to deepen your experience of this fascinating country with a focus on Bhutanese textiles and interactions with locals. This tour has been crafted especially for people who love textiles, craft and local culture and who seek the immersive experience of travelling with Wendy Garrity, who has lived and breathed Bhutan and is passionate about the Bhutanese people, their culture, and particularly their weaving.
Bard Graduate Center Gallery
Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles
February 23–July 8, 2018
New York, New York Learn More
Fabricating Power with Balinese Textiles presents the making and use of textiles from Bali as ceremonial objects. It also explores the role of textiles as symbols of cultural resilience and continuity. The exhibition reaches back to the 1930s fieldwork of a group of Western expatriates, including anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who converged on the predominantly Hindu Island of Bali, in the Indonesian archipelago. They arrived to document artistic practices and ceremonies, motivated by the concern that these would soon be lost to Western influence and modernity. The seminal research by Mead and Bateson on Balinese culture include extensive notes that describe the use of cloth in various ceremonies and indicate that weaving was a highly ritualized, ongoing activity.
Displayed will be exquisite and rare pieces assembled from collections in the United States, including examples from the American Museum of Natural History that were collected by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson during their fieldwork in Bali. These textiles, which derive their aesthetic and ritual powers from techniques of fabrication and use in various life cycle ceremonies, also serve as records of an important period in Balinese history.
The exhibition is organized in three sections: Beliefs, Offerings, and Life Ceremonies, which offer insights into weaving traditions, aesthetics, and ritual practices. Each section encourages visitors to consider the powerful role of textiles as documented in the 1930s and as it is made and used today.
Companion activities include a spotlight tour with curator Urmila Mohan, workshops with the Textile Arts Center, and Balinese music concerts.
Textile Museum at George Washington University
Binding the Clouds: The Art of Central Asian Ikat
March 10–July 9, 2018
Washington, D.C. Learn More
In the region that is now Uzbekistan, oasis towns were once full with the rainbow colors of ikat fabrics. Through artworks recently donated to the museum, this exhibition focuses on the sophisticated dyeing technique known in Uzbekistan as abrband (binding the clouds). Image: Mid-19th century hanging, Uzbekistan.. Photo courtesy of The Textile Museum.
Textile Museum of Canada
Anne Kidd: Curious. Date
March 14–June 10, 2018
Toronto, Canada Learn More
The exhibition presents four series of textile artist Anne Kidd’s work, along with pieces she has selected from the Museum’s global tapestry collection. Each object artfully illustrates individual and cultural ingenuity in the techniques of tapestry weaving. Selections include Coptic fragments made in Egypt, examples of Peruvian tapestry, and 19th-century Chinese silk slit tapestry, and a stunning Mexican serape.
Museum of Fine Arts
Collecting Stories: Native American Art
April 14, 2018–March 10, 2019
Boston, Massachusetts Learn More
The exhibition focuses on objects collected in the formative years of building the early holdings of Native American art at the Museum of Fine Arts. Highlights include an early Navajo blanket, a pair of important Eastern Woodlands moccasins, and a Plains headpiece, made of deer and porcupine hair.
Young Knitter Accha Alta
Textile Tour Highlight
Textile Arts of the Andes
October 22-November 2, 2018
Join Andean Textile Arts for ten remarkable days visiting artisans in remote weaving villages plus stops at many of the greatest archeological sites of the Incan Empire, including two days at the citadel of Machu Picchu. Nilda Callañaupa, the founder and director of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, will accompany the tour to the weaving communities. The final day is spent in Lima, with a viewing of the Amano Museum’s private collection of exquisite pre-Columbian textiles. Please contact Pam Art at pam.art@icloud.com for more information and to register. http://andeantextilearts.org/travel_tours
The Textile Museum, George Washington University
Vanishing Traditions: Textiles and Treasures from Southwest China
February 24-July 9, 2018
Washington, D. C. Learn More
What better way to start the Chinese New Year than by celebrating dazzling Chinese festival costumes? For centuries, minority cultures in southwest China have donned elaborate textiles, jewelry, and accessories for community celebrations, traditions now endangered by modernization. The Textile Museum’s newest exhibition, Vanishing Traditions, features a selection of celebratory costumes from its Bea Roberts’ Collection of Chinese Minority Textiles.
The Roberts’ Collection is comprised of 284 Chinese minority textiles from Southwest China and is focused on highly embellished festival costumes—a single costume can feature as many as ten to fifteen textiles, such as a jacket, skirt, apron, baby carrier, belt, and more than a dozen pieces of jewelry. The collection also includes textiles and tools that illustrate embellishment techniques, including a set of batik panels before they were dyed. Lectures, a Chinese New Year celebration, and a film, “Love Songs of the Miao,” accompany the exhibition.
Many ethnic minorities in Southwest China don’t have a written language, and group history is passed on through textile design. Due to urbanization and machine production, textile traditions like those represented in the exhibition are at risk of vanishing. Enjoy this extraordinary opportunity to celebrate these endangered textile treasures.
(Top) Festival jacket (front), China, Guizhou Province, Huangping County, Gejia people, ca. 1950–2000. All photos courtesy of the Textile Museum.
The International Quilt Study Center & Museum
Eiko Okano’s Delectable World
February 9-June 28, 2018
Lincoln, Nebraska Learn More
An exhibition of leading Japanese quilt artist Eiko Okano. Her kimono quilts—a form common among Japanese artists—are bold and playful exploring themes of food, botanical forms, or national identity.
Craft Study Centre
Peter Collingwood: wovenunwoven
January 2, 2018–June 30, 2018
Surrey, England Learn More
The exhibition displays the “Ethnographic Collection” of master weaver, teacher, and author, Peter Collingwood, as well as his own work. Collingwood made his first purchases of woven materials as a young Red Cross doctor helping with refugees in Jordan, and he added to these throughout his life.
Textile Tour Highlight
Wild Fibers’ Himalayan Adventure Tour
August 21–September 3, 2018
Immerse yourself in the dramatic beauty, rich culture, and traditional life of the High Himalayas. Stroll through wandering alleyways, open fields, past giant prayer wheels, and visit stupas and monasteries. Ride over high mountain passes past herds of yaks, goats, sheep. Experience the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of spending the night in a nomadic camp snuggled in tents under the spectacular dance of the Himalayan sky.
Trip highlights include a visit to the only cashmere mill in the world owned and operated by a nomadic cooperative, and a day at the Cashmere Craft Center, joining the women engaged in spinning, weaving, and knitting. Rounding out the tour is three nights aboard a luxury houseboat on Nigeen Lake in Kashmir. There, you’ll visit the home of an artisan whose family has been spinning and weaving traditional kashmiri shawls for seven generations.
For pricing and availability, please contact: Linda Cortright: wildfibers@mac.com
Dallas Museum of Art
Asian Textiles: Art and Trade Along the Silk Road
December 16, 2017–December 9, 2018
Dallas, Texas Learn More
Centuries ago, Chinese silks prized in ancient Rome led to the forging of that complex and glorious trade route between the East and West known as the Silk Road. The Dallas Museum of Art’s newest year-long installation, Asian Textiles: Art and Trade Along the Silk Road, highlights the passage of luxury goods en route that led to a rich interchange of arts and crafts and culture between China and the Mediterranean world and myriad stops along the way.
Drawn from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collection, this exhibition showcases fine examples of garments and ornamental hangings from India, Central Asia, China, and Japan. The garments range from a Japanese fireman’s coat to an Indian sari and a Chinese dragon robe. The textiles show a wide range of techniques found in Asian textiles, such as ikat weaving, metal-wrapping thread, and colored ink paintings on textile backgrounds.
The Museum has spent decades forming its collection of luxury Asian garments and ornamental hangings, but this exhibition celebrates the first time that a selection from its Asian collection has been presented in a stand-alone exhibition. It’s a spectacular debut.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Spirited Creatures: Animal Representations in Chinese Silk and Lacquer
October 21, 2017–July 22, 2018
New York, New York Learn More
Twenty textiles and fifty lacquers explore how real and mythical animals, such as the dragon, unicorn, phoenix, lion, ox, and butterfly, are depicted on luxury materials of late imperial China. The exhibition will present a wide range of objects: dragon robes, rank badges, and tapestry panels for interior decoration. Image: Panel, Silk embroidery on satin, 1777. China. Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Register now for the 11th International Shibori Symposium
June 21–July 10, 2018
Japan Learn More
The 11th International Shibori Symposium spans three regions of Japan, connecting the contemporary art and fashion hub of Tōkyō, traditional shibori and design centers in Nagoya, and rural folk traditions in Yamagata and Yonezawa. The symposium explores their shared legacies of craft and local industry.
Portland Art Museum, Center for Contemporary Native Art
Interwoven Radiance
November 11, 2017–June 24, 2018
Portland, Oregon Learn More
In Tlingit artist and weaver Lily Hope’s artist statement, she writes: “I weave to bring order to my thoughts, to converge with the realms beyond our seeing eye, and to help bring the past into present, and present into future. . . . When I start my day weaving, I bounce when I walk, sing as I talk, and smile with everything. Weaving Chilkat is like breathing with the universal consciousness. All is well in the world when I’m weaving.”
It is with this reverence for her culture and her love of weaving that Lily Hope, Sealaska Heritage’s current artist-in-residence, has organized the Portland Art Museum’s next exhibition, Interwoven Radiance. Celebrating the artistic achievements and vitality of Chilkat and Ravenstail weavers of the Northwest Coast, the exhibition will explore the philosophy and ways of life for women weavers.
The cultural practice of Chilkat weaving originated among the Tsimshian, and was retained by traditional Tlingit weavers in the Chilkat Valley of Alaska. Weaving these textiles took months of preparation, including harvesting cedar bark and processing mountain goat hair. The weavers spin earth and animal together by hand for more than six weeks to create the 1,000 yards of warp needed to weave ceremonial robes. Robes are woven on an upright loom, with all tension controlled by the weaver’s fingers. Most robes take more than a year to finish.
The exhibition features robes by weavers Clarissa Rizal and Teri Rofkar among several others. Lily Hope’s first Chilkat robe, Heritage Robe, which took 1700 hours to complete, will also be on display. Another highlight is a robe called Weavers Across the Waters, a community-woven robe including work by more than forty weavers from the Northwest Coast and into Canada, all of whom contributed an original weaving to the full-size robe.
Hope believes Chilkat weavers have a responsibility to keep creating and carrying on the traditions of their people. She wants to share with others and leave the world more beautiful, “Through our weavings and through a joyful spirit.”
Images: (Top) Resilience Robe by Clarissa Rizal. (Bottom) DNA Robe by Teri Rofkar, Weavers across Water Photos courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
Kent State University Museum
Fringe Elements
July 28, 2017–July 1, 2018
Kent, Ohio Learn More
This exhibition assembles examples of fringe on costumes and textiles from around the world, highlighting both the great diversity in fringe but also the surprising links between seemingly disparate cultures.
