Tag: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art, presented by the Met Fifth Ave

Description

The process of creating textiles has long been a springboard for artistic invention. In Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art, two extraordinary bodies of work separated by at least 500 years are brought together to explore the striking connections between artists of the ancient Andes and those of the 20th century.

Featuring more than 50 works, including major loans and new acquisitions, this cross-historical exhibition offers new insights into the emergence of abstract imagery. Each of the four modern artists featured developed innovative approaches to an ancient medium through deep study of Andean techniques. Shown together, these ancient and modern weavings reposition the place of textiles in global art history.

Details

On display from March 5–June 16, 2024

at 82nd Street
New York, NY, 10028

[map link]

Anni Albers. Pasture, 1958. Tightly woven cotton threads create a green abstract pasture with burnt orange highlights
Anni Albers. Pasture, 1958. Mercerized cotton. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1969 (69.135). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2023. Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, photo by Peter Zeray.

Group Info

The exhibition displays textiles by four distinguished modern practitioners—Anni Albers, Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Olga de Amaral—alongside pieces by Andean artists from the first millennium BCE to the 16th century.

Curation Credits

The exhibition is made possible by The Modern Circle.

Tawney’s Triune is September’s “eye-con” for the Met Museum’s Department of Textile Conservation

Lenore Tawney’s Triune, a large tapestry woven in 1961, is a featured object on the Metropolitan Museum of Art Department of Textile Conservation

Instagram (@textilesmet)

Triune is also their eye-con (or profile photo) for the month of September.
This beautiful piece was one of forty weavings exhibited in Tawney’s first solo show at the Staten Island Museum in 1961. “There is an urgency that sweeps us up,” wrote painter, Agnes Martin, on that exhibition, “an originality and success that holds us in wonder.”