Displaying items by tag: textiles

Asian art is gloriously basking in the sun this year. While 42 extraordinary galleries from around the globe open their doors with one-of-a-kind exhibitions during Asia Week New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is celebrating the centennial of its world-renowned Department of Asian Art. Even Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour jumped on the bandwagon as she recently visited Beijing to promote the Met Costume Institute’s upcoming exhibition "China: Through the Looking Glass."

Works of art from all over the Asian continent and spanning over four millennia will be shown throughout Manhattan by international Asian art specialists during Asia Week New York, starting March 13 to March 21, 2015.  Art lovers can take in museum-caliber treasures including the rarest and finest Asian examples of painting, sculpture, bronzes, ceramics, jewelry, jade, textiles, prints, and photographs from all over Asia.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has published a new handbook—the first in more than 20 years—of its encyclopedic collections. Featuring some 550 masterpieces from the Museum’s world renowned holdings of Asian, European, American, and modern and contemporary art, this volume includes a broad range of media from each of the Museum’s curatorial departments, including paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, the decorative arts, costumes and textiles, arms and armor, and architectural settings. Expanded entries provide in depth information on some of the most significant works, among them Thomas Eakins’s masterpiece "The Gross Clinic" (1875) and a superb man and horse armor acquired in 2009.

The introduction to the handbook, written by Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, recounts the Museum’s institutional history and the formation and distinctive characteristics of its collection.

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts will be represented exclusively by the international gallery Hauser & Wirth, the organizations announced Thursday.

The foundation, established by Kelley in 2007, issues grants for challenging and novel projects in Kelley's favored mediums, which included textiles, drawing, painting, video, photography, sculpture, installation and performance.

When Kelley died of an apparent suicide in South Pasadena in 2012, the foundation took on the role of shepherding his legacy. Hauser & Wirth said it will seek to reinforce Kelley's stature as one of Los Angeles' most influential artists, expand the foundation's programs and exhibit Kelley's work at its galleries worldwide.

The Dayton Institute of Art in Dayton, Ohio, is currently hosting “Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945,” an intriguing exhibition that explores the influence of the Art Deco movement on Japanese culture. The show, which has been on view at a number of institutions, including the Seattle Art Museum in Washington, the Tyler Museum of Art in Texas, and the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina, is the first traveling exhibition outside of Tokyo dedicated to Japanese Art Deco. Drawn from the private Levenson Collection of Japanese art in Clearwater, Florida, “Deco Japan” features nearly two-hundred objects, including sculpture, ceramics, glassware, jewelry, textiles, prints, lacquerware, furniture, and paintings, including five works from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Art Deco emerged in Paris in 1925 at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, where the style was first exhibited.

The Design Museum of Barcelona, which boasts a 70,000-plus-piece collection, opened to the public earlier this month. The museum’s massive collection was formed by merging the city’s existing Museum of Decorative Arts, Ceramics Museum, Textile Museum, and Cabinet of Graphic Arts. The institution, which presents everything from medieval fabrics to modern furniture, encourages visitors to explore the evolution of decorative arts and design throughout history.

The Design Museum is located within the Disseny Hub Barcelona, a building in Placa de les Glories, a once-bustling area that has been the subject of an ardent revitalization project. Designed by the Barcelona-based architecture firm, MBM (Martorell, Bohigas, Mackay, Capdevila and Gual), the metal-and-glass-clad Hub includes a conference center, an education center, a library, an archive, an auditorium, and 16,400-square-feet of exhibition space.

In conjunction with the grand opening of the renovated American Wing, the Baltimore Museum of Art presents "Lessons Learned: American Schoolgirl Embroideries" on view through May 2015. The exhibition features more than 20 samplers and silk embroideries made by American girls who attended schools in Maryland and other states along the East Coast during the 18th and 19th centuries. From opulent to understated, the works provide a fascinating glimpse into early American life.

“The samplers and embroideries on view in 'Lessons Learned' were once displayed by families as showpieces to advertise their daughters’ accomplishments,” said Curator of Textiles Anita Jones. “In working with a needle and thread, these young women learned a skill, diligence, patience, and obedience.”

Sheikh Saud bin Mohammed Al-Thani, the former minister of culture and heritage in Qatar, who spent more than $1bn (£630m) of the oil rich country's money on art, has died aged 48. A cousin of Qatar's current Emir, Sheikh Al-Thani was in charge of developing libraries and museums. According to "The Art Newspaper," between 1997 and 2005, he spent more than any other individual on art. Details of his death have not been announced.

His huge collection is spread across five existing and planned museums: the Museum of Islamic Art, the National Library, the Natural History Museum, a Photography Museum, and a museum for traditional textiles and clothing.

George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC, is beefing up its arts infrastructure. Less than two months after the university finalised its merger with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the GW Museum and the Textile Museum announced they will open a joint facility on the university’s Foggy Bottom campus on 21 March 2015.

The museum is set to occupy both the Maxwell Woodhull House, a historic former home of a US Navy commander, and a 35,000 sq. ft addition designed by the local firm Hartman-Cox Architects. Since the university finalized its merger with the Corcoran in August, it has also assumed operations of the gallery’s Beaux-Arts building near the White House.

The textiles historian Terry Satsuki Milhaupt had nearly finished her comprehensive book on kimonos when she committed suicide in 2012. Her widower, Curtis J. Milhaupt, heroically completed her work, “Kimono: A Modern History” (Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press), and a show of the same title, based on her scholarship, opens on Sept. 27 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and runs through Jan. 24.

Mr. Milhaupt, a law professor at Columbia, said in an interview that when the book galleys finally arrived, “I burst into tears, mostly from relief.”

A little-known Dutch collection of Indian chintzes, newly acquired by the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., is revealing centuries of changing habits in fabric exporting, collecting and tailoring.

The museum paid an undisclosed price for about 170 textiles, including bedspreads, caps, jackets and robes, dating to the early 1700s. The designs combine European folk patterns and botanical motifs typical of Mughal landscape paintings.