Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction @ MoMA, New York

Woven Histories:

Textiles and Modern Abstraction 

MoMA, New York 

April 20 — September 13, 2025 

Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) 

Weaving 89/21 (Tejedura 89/21), 1989 

Cut-and-woven paper, 9 × 8″ (22.9 × 20.3 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 

Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through 

the Latin American and Caribbean Fund 

in honor of Jeanne Collins 

© 2024 Fundación Gego

Ed Rossbach 

Constructed Color Wall Hanging, 1965 

Synthetic raffia, 57 x 71″ (144.8 x 180.3 cm) 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Emery Fund

Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt) 

Weaving 90/36, 1990 

Pencil on cut paper woven with plastic packaging, 

6 1/4 × 5″ (15.9 × 12.7 cm)

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 

Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through 

the Latin American and Caribbean Fund 

in honor of Patty Lipshutz 

© 2024 Fundación Gego

The Museum of Modern Art presents Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, an in-depth exhibition that delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction. The exhibition includes approximately 150 works in a range of mediums—from textiles and basketry to painting, drawing, sculpture, and media works—exploring the overlap between abstract art, weaving, craft, and fashion. Woven Histories challenges long-held notions of the weave as a function of textile alone, exploring the many forms both warp and weft have taken when explored by abstract artists over the past 100 years. 

Previously on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the exhibition’s final presentation is at MoMA, with numerous works not seen at earlier venues.

Unfolding chronologically, Woven Histories begins with works by pioneering artists of the early 20th century whose explorations in textile transformed the scope of modern art. Highlighting MoMA’s substantial holdings from the period, the show’s final iteration exclusively features Gunta Stolzl’s "Wall Hanging" (1924), and an expanded selection of work by Anni Albers, including her historic "Free-Hanging Room Dividers" (c. 1940). More recent works by such artists as Igshaan Adams, Rosemarie Trockel, and Andrea Zittel reveal common threads between this expanded history of abstract art and contemporary practice. Highlighting issues of labor and identity that are intertwined with modern textile production, Woven Histories posits weaving and textiles as the quintessential link between lived experience and art, as explored in works by Diedrick Brackens, Liz Collins, Jeffrey Gibson, and Laura Huertas Millán.

Inspired by contemporary artists’ interest in, and engagement with, both traditional and avant-garde weaving practices, Woven Histories hinges on key historical moments during which these intersections are clearest, from the early 20th century, through the postwar moment, and continuing today. Many of the included artists have work on view at MoMA for the first time, including Shan Goshorn, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Ellen Lesperance, Carole Frances Lung, and Marilou Schultz. Woven Histories expands the notion of the development of abstraction from its earliest days, challenging its status as a solely conceptual and formalist framework by suggesting that its materiality—found in woven, knotted, and braided fabric—is equally critical to its understanding and success.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. The exhibition is curated by Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Art. The Museum of Modern Art presentation is organized by Esther Adler, Curator, with Emily Olek, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawing and Prints, and Paul Galloway, Collection Specialist, Department of Architecture and Design.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART - MoMA, NEW YORK

www.moma.org

Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito @ Yancey Richardson, New York - "orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit" Exhibition

Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito

orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit

Yancey Richardson, New York

February 27 – April 12, 2025

Laura Letinsky & John Paul Morabito 

indiapilehamletmemajamina, 2015 

Cotton and wool, 52 x 41 inches

© Laura Letinsky & John Paul Morabito

Courtesy Yancey Richardson

Yancey Richardson presents 

orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit, an exhibition of cotton and wool tapestries made by Laura Letinsky and John Paul Morabito. The exhibition is on view in the project gallery.

Since 2013, Letinsky and Morabito have worked collaboratively, bringing photography and weaving into dialogue and exploring the cooperative possibilities between the two mediums. Central to their conception of this project was an understanding of the loom as a kind of precursor to the creative capacities eventually unleashed by the computer and the digital age more broadly.

In orchidsgladiolascowsdaffodilscandywrappersyelloworange-bloodredroses&shit, Laura Letinsky continues her career-long investigation of photography’s relationship to temporality, specifically through the genre of still-life. While travelling across India in 2014, Letinsky made multiple trips to the Bangalore Flower market where she found streets transformed by remnants from the early morning market. Crushed gladiolas, orchids, roses, marigolds and lilies blended together, creating dense and vivid fields of complex color. In Mumbai, Laura Letinsky made pictures of flower petals left behind on the streets following celebratory wedding nights. With her camera aimed straight  down she created pure abstractions of texture and color.

Weaving together richly hued cotton and wool thread, Morabito translated Letinsky’s digital abstractions into lusciously colored painterly tapestries. In contrast to the sharp delineation of forms so typical of photographic prints, the tapestries present abstract yet tactile visual fields that connect us back to moments viscerally felt. Expressed through a wide range of brilliantly colored threads, the works explore the tensions between beauty, fragility and loss.

In Letinsky and Morabito words: “Last night’s flowers, digitally apprehended, are cast out of an Eden remembered, and brought home to the loom. The shutter’s click is joined by a wooden whirr as the shuttle plies back and forth. Line by line, the digital screen is consumed by lapis blues, acid yellows, and putrescent greens. Those wool threads, loose and tangled, are mired amongst the flowers (redolent with their perfumes and high noon sweat).”

Laura Letinsky was born in 1962 in Winnipeg, Canada. She received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 1986 and MFA from Yale University’s School of Art in 1991. Since 1994, she has been a Professor in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at FOAM, Amsterdam; PhotoEspaña, Madrid; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Denver Art Museum; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Renaissance Society, Chicago. Public collections featuring Letinsky’s work include the Art Institute of Chicago; Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yale University Art Gallery. She has received numerous awards, including the Canada Council International Residency (2014); Richard Driehaus Foundation Award (2003); Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2002) and the Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2000). Publications include To Want for Nothing, ROMAN NVMERALS, 2019; Time’s Assignation, Radius Books, 2018; Ill Form and Void Full, Radius Books, 2014; After All, Damiani, 2010; Hardly More Than Ever, Renaissance Society, 2004 and Venus Inferred, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

John Paul Morabito was born in 1982 in New York, USA. They are Assistant Professor and Head of Textiles at Kent State University School of Art. In 2024, John Paul Morabito was named a United States Artists Fellow for their significant contributions to weaving and contemporary art. Morabito has exhibited at international venues including the Zhejiang Art Museum (Hangzhou City, China); the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (affiliate of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, NC); the Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA); the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); the Center for Craft (Asheville, NC); and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI). Their work is represented in public and private collections including the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC) and the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec (Montréal, Canada). They hold a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. John Paul Morabito is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.

YANCEY RICHARDSON

525 West 22nd Street, New York City

www.yanceyrichardson.com

Olga de Amaral @ Fondation Cartier, Paris - Retrospective + Catalogue

Olga de Amaral

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris

Jusqu'au 16 mars 2025

Please Scroll down for English version

Olga de Amaral

Vue d'exposition / Installation View

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

© Olga de Amaral. Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Photo © Cyril Marcilhacy

La Fondation Cartier présente la première grande rétrospective en Europe de l'artiste colombienne Olga de Amaral, figure incontournable du Fiber Art.

Dès les années 1960, Olga de Amaral repousse les limites du médium textile en multipliant les expériences sur les matières (lin, coton, crin de cheval, gesso, feuilles d’or ou palladium) et les techniques : elle tisse, noue, tresse, entrelace les fils pour créer des pièces tridimensionnelles et monumentales. Inclassable, son œuvre emprunte tant aux principes modernistes, qu’elle découvre à l’académie de Cranbrook aux États-Unis, qu’aux traditions vernaculaires de son pays et à l’art précolombien. Après avoir présenté six œuvres de la série Brumas dans le cadre de l'exposition Géométries Sud en 2018, la Fondation Cartier retrace l’ensemble de la carrière d’Olga de Amaral et célèbre celle qui marqua une véritable révolution dans l’art du textile.

L'exposition rassemble un grand nombre d’œuvres historiques jamais présentées hors de Colombie ainsi que des œuvres contemporaines aux formes et couleurs vibrantes. L’architecture de l’exposition est conçue par Lina Ghotmeh. Jouant sur les contrastes et les échelles, l’architecte lie les œuvres entre elles et propose également un dialogue avec notre mémoire, nos sens et le paysage qui nous entoure.

Née en 1932 à Bogotá, Olga de Amaral est une figure emblématique de la scène artistique colombienne. Après un diplôme d’architecture au Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca, elle poursuit ses études à l’académie de Cranbrook dans le Michigan, équivalent américain du Bauhaus allemand. Elle y découvre l’art textile dans l’atelier de tissage de Marianne Strengell, une artiste et designeuse finno-américaine qui fut l’une des premières à privilégier la structure et la grille du textile au motif.

Dans les années 1960 et 1970 Olga de Amaral participe aux côtés de Sheila Hicks et Magdalena Abakanowicz au développement du Fiber Art en utilisant de nouveaux matériaux et de nouvelles techniques empruntées tant aux principes modernistes qu’aux traditions populaires de son pays. Ses œuvres abstraites à grande échelle s’affranchissent du mur et refusent toute catégorisation : à la fois peintures, sculptures, installations et architectures elles enveloppent leur public dans l’univers sensoriel et intime de l’artiste.

Olga de Amaral est nommée “Visionary Artist” par le Museum of Art & Design de New York en 2005 et elle reçoit le Women’s Cacus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award en 2019. Ses oeuvres figurent dans de grandes collections publiques et privées à travers le monde dont la Tate Modern, le MoMA, le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris ou l’Art Institute of Chicago. Le Museum of Fine Arts de Houston lui a consacré une grande exposition intitulée Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock en 2021.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Marie Perennès

Un superbe catalogue accompagne cette exposition.

Olga de Amaral

Éditions Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris

Version française et version anglaise

Broché, 22 × 29 cm, 300 pages

250 reproductions couleur et noir et blanc

ISBN : 978-2-86925-184-7

Parution : octobre 2024

Avec les contributions d’Ann Coxon, conservatrice et spécialiste de l’art textile ; de Lina Ghotmeh, architecte de l’exposition ; de Marie Perennès, commissaire de l’exposition ; et de María Wills Londoño, historienne de l’art.

ENGLISH VERSION

The Fondation Cartier presents the first major retrospective in Europe of Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, a key figure of the Fiber Art movement.

Since the 1960s, Olga de Amaral has pushed the limits of the textile medium by increasing experiments with various materials (linen, cotton, horsehair, gesso, gold leaf or palladium) and techniques: she weaves, knots, braids, and interweaves the threads to create monumental, threedimensional pieces. Unclassifiable, her work borrows as much from the Modernist principles she discovered at the Cranbrook Academy in the United States, as from the vernacular traditions of her country and from pre- Columbian art. After presenting six works from the Brumas series as part of the Southern Geometries exhibition in 2018, the Fondation Cartier retraces Olga de Amaral’s entire career and celebrates a figure who brought about a true revolution in the textile arts.

The exhibition brings together a large number of historical works never presented outside Colombia, as well as contemporary pieces with vibrant shapes and colors. The architecture of the exhibition is designed by Lina Ghotmeh. Playing on contrasts and scales, it links the different works together and initiates a dialogue with our memory, senses, and the surrounding landscape.

Born in 1932 in Bogotá, Olga de Amaral is an emblematic figure of the Colombian art scene. Following a degree in architecture at the Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca, she pursued her studies at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, the American equivalent of the German Bauhaus. While there, she discovered textile art in the weaving workshop of Marianne Strengell, a Finnish- American artist and designer who was one of the first to favor the structure and grid of textiles over the pattern.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Olga de Amaral participated in the development of Fiber Art alongside Sheila Hicks and Magdalena Abakanowicz, using new materials and techniques borrowed both from the Modernist principles and from the popular traditions of her native country. Her large-scale abstract works free themselves from the wall and refuse any form of categorization. At once, paintings, sculptures, installations, and architecture, they envelop the audience in the artist’s sensorial, intimate universe. Olga de Amaral was named "Visionary Artist" by New York's Museum of Art & Design in 2005 and received the Women's Cacus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Her work can be found in major public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Modern, MoMA, Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has dedicated a major exhibition to her entitled Olga de Amaral: To Weave a Rock in 2021.

Curator: Marie Perennès

The exhibition is accompagned by a wonderful catalogue with English version.

Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

261, boulevard Raspail - 75014 Paris

www.fondationcartier.com

OLGA DE AMARAL 

FONDATION CARTIER POUR L'ART CONTEMPORAIN, PARIS

12-10-2024 - 16-03-2025