Past Exhibition
Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
Details
This transformative exhibition explores how abstract art and woven textiles have intertwined over the past hundred years.
In the 20th century, textiles have often been considered lesser—as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. Woven Histories challenges the hierarchies that often separate textiles from fine arts. Putting into dialogue some 160 works by more than 50 creators from across generations and continents, the exhibition explores the contributions of weaving and related techniques to abstraction, modernism’s preeminent art form.
See a variety of textile techniques including weaving, knitting, netting, knotting, and felting. Understand the wide-ranging reasons artists from Anni Albers to Rosemarie Trockel and Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee Nation) have engaged with this art form. Some seek to effect social change, others to address political issues. Engaging with textiles as subject, material, and technique, others revitalize abstraction’s formal conventions or critique its patriarchal history and gendered identity.
Explore this overlooked thread of art history that centers new voices: creators once marginalized for their gender, race, or class.
Other Venues:
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 09/17/2023–01/21/2024
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 11/08/2024–03/02/2025
- The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 04/20/2025–09/13/2025
Explore Selected Works
Dive Deeper
Artists at Work: Liz Collins Weaves a Promised Land
Watch as Liz Collins invites us all into the “rich and limitless” creative space of textile art.
Who is Anni Albers? 8 Things to Know
Meet the daring artist whose weavings and prints changed the way we see textiles.
Zoe Leonard on Rigorous Conceptual Art
Watch Zoe Leonard discuss her career with Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series.
Unveiling Contemporary Artist Ann Hamilton’s 30-Year Odyssey
Watch Ann Hamilton discuss her nearly 30-year career as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art.
Events
Artists at Work: Liz Collins Weaves a Promised Land
Watch as Liz Collins invites us all into the “rich and limitless” creative space of textile art.
Who is Anni Albers? 8 Things to Know
Meet the daring artist whose weavings and prints changed the way we see textiles.
Zoe Leonard on Rigorous Conceptual Art
Watch Zoe Leonard discuss her career with Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series.
Unveiling Contemporary Artist Ann Hamilton’s 30-Year Odyssey
Watch Ann Hamilton discuss her nearly 30-year career as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art.
Artists at Work: Liz Collins Weaves a Promised Land
Watch as Liz Collins invites us all into the “rich and limitless” creative space of textile art.
Who is Anni Albers? 8 Things to Know
Meet the daring artist whose weavings and prints changed the way we see textiles.
Zoe Leonard on Rigorous Conceptual Art
Watch Zoe Leonard discuss her career with Lynne Cooke, senior curator, special projects in modern art, National Gallery of Art, as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series.
Unveiling Contemporary Artist Ann Hamilton’s 30-Year Odyssey
Watch Ann Hamilton discuss her nearly 30-year career as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Lecture Series at the National Gallery of Art.
