Displaying items by tag: textile museum

Pairing luxurious textiles from Turkey, Iran, and Syria with richly detailed 17th-century paintings by Dutch and Flemish masters, the exhibition "A Thirst for Riches: Carpets from the East in Paintings from the West" opened June 6 at the Aga Khan Museum. Running until October 18, the exhibition features signature carpets and paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, supplemented by loans from the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto; the Leiden Collection, New York; the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf Collection, Toronto.

A new museum in Washington will showcase a wide variety of art, history and culture through ancient textiles and a significant collection on the history of the nation's capital — while also signaling a major expansion in the arts for George Washington University.

The university opened the $33 million complex Saturday on its downtown campus where two museums will share one facility. The six-story complex is the new home for Washington's 90-year-old Textile Museum and its collection of 19,000 artifacts, along with a new museum featuring maps and documents tracing the capital city's history.

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 88-year-old Textile Museum will move from its historic DuPont Circle home to the George Washington University campus in Washington, D.C.’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood as part of a $33 million project. Construction on the new 35,000-square-foot museum is underway and expected to reach completion in spring 2014. The transfer of 19,000 works, some dating back thousands of years, is expected to take an additional six months. The Textile Museum’s new location is slated to open to the public in late fall 2014.

Founded by American forester, philanthropist and collector George Hewitt Myers, the museum’s mission is to expand public knowledge and appreciation of the artistic merits and cultural importance of the world’s textiles. The museum’s collection includes 15^th century rugs from Egypt, Spanish carpets, early Islamic textiles, pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles, Anatolian rugs, and more.

The Textile Museum’s final exhibition, Out of Southeast Asia: Art that Sustains will be on view through October 13 and the museum’s historic buildings will remain open through the holiday season.