Tag: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Art Out and About

July 16, 2025 0 Comment

This year continues to deliver when it comes to exciting and immersive exhibitions of fiber art. Artists that work with browngrotta arts are included in exhibitions in Montana, Boston, Trondberg, Norway, and San Diego, California. Elsewhere are monumental tapestries and imaginative presentations from Berkeley, California to Tilburg, the Netherlands, to Miami, Florida to North Jyland, Denmark and parts in between.

moon landing at Canterbury Cathedral
Moon Landing at Canterbury Cathedral © Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral | Photographer: Jon Barlow

Moon Landing: an immersive textile and musical collaboration
Through August 31, 2025
Canterbury Cathedral
Cathedral House 
11 The Precincts
Canterbury, CT1 2EH
United Kingdom
https://www.canterbury-cathedral.org/whats-on/events/moon-landing

This summer, the medieval splendour of Canterbury Cathedral will complement a stunning free-to-view modern art installation inspired by the little-known story of the women who wove the integrated computer circuits and memory cores which enabled the 1969 moon landing. The breathtaking installation moon landing – a duo work created by British textile artist and designer of woven textiles, Margo Selby, and award-winning composer, Helen Caddick – comprises a vibrant 16-meter hand-woven textile suspended from the ceiling near the Cathedral’s Trinity Chapel, created in response to the moon landing score, an original musical piece scored for strings. It is a celebration of the mathematical and technical possibilities of weaving and the crossovers of pattern, tone and rhythm found in both music and woven textiles.

Lia Cook Digital Weaving
Detail: Maze Gaze, Lia Cook, cotton, rayon, 72″ x 52″, 2007

Digital Weaving Norway
From August 12 – 15, 2025
Solgaard Skog 132, 1599 
Moss, Norway
https://digitalweaving.no

Lia Cook’s work will be featured in the exhibition of Digital Weaving – Innovation Through Pixels in Norway — a conference and exhibition celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the TC-Looms with Digital Weaving Norway (August 12–15). 

American Flag
Photo supplied by Museum of the American Revolution

Banners of History: An Exhibition of Original Revolutionary War Flags
Through August 10, 2025
Museum of American Revolution
101 South Third Street
Philadelphia, PA
https://www.amrevmuseum.org/exhibits/banners-of-liberty-an-exhibition-of-original-revolutionary-war-flag

A significant use of fiber throughout the world is in the creation of flags. In preparation for the 250th Anniversary of the birth of the United States, the Museum of the American Revolutionary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has mounted an expansive exhibition of flags from the early part of the Nation’s history. The exhibition, dispalyed in the Museum’s first-floor Patriots Gallery, features the largest gathering of rare and significant Revolutionary War flags in more than two centuries. This one you see online!

Christine Joy
Christine Joy. Photo by Tom Grotta

Willow Woven
Through August 6, 2025
Studio Gallery
Hennebery Eddy Architects’
109 N Rouse 
Bozeman, MT
https://downtownbozeman.org/summer-art-walks

Willow Woven, by Christine Joy, part of Bozeman, Montana’s Art Walk is on view in the window of Hennebery Eddy Architects’ Studio Gallery until August 6th, 2025.

On public display in the studio’s storefront window, the gallery is about making connections — with neighbors, friends, clients, and colleagues. The alternating exhibits at the Studio Gallery feature curated staff and visiting artist displays that spark new ideas and promote a shared sense of place.

Lee ShinJa: Image of City
Lee ShinJa: Image of City, 1961. Cotton, linen, and wool thread on cotton cloth; coiling, free technique. Courtesy of the artist and Tina Kim Gallery.

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread
Through February 1, 2026
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archives (BAMPFA)
215 Center Street 
Berkeley, CA
https://bampfa.org/program/lee-shinja-drawing-thread

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread at BAMPFA in Berkeley, California is the first North American survey of the captivating work of the under-recognized Korean artist Lee ShinJa (b. 1930, Uljin, South Korea; lives and works in Seoul). Lee ShinJa worked throughout the five decades of contemporary fiber arts’ history, from the 1950s to the early 2000s, the exhibition showcases the artist’s bold innovations in fiber through 40 monumental textile works, woven maquettes, and preparatory sketches. Like artists from other Eastern Europe, her artworks from the 1950s incorporate everyday objects and found materials, such as grain sacks, mosquito nets, and domestic wallpaper; notably, she used yarn salvaged from secondhand sweaters and bedding to make her earliest tapestries

Jane Balsgaard Relief
Jane Balsgaard, Relief 320 x 180 cm, for the exhibition in Vrå (Nordth Jylland). Photo courtesy of Jane Balsgaard

Kunstbygningen/Vrå Udstillingen
Museum for Contemporary Art in North-Jylland
Højskolevej 3A
9760 Vrå, Denmark
Through July 27 – August 31, 2026
https://www.kunstbygningenvraa.dk/vraa-udstillingen]

Jane Balsgaard will hang a several-part relief in an exhibition at the Vrå-Udstilligen in North Jylland, Denmark through August 31st. The opening party is July 26 at 2:00 pm. The exhibition is supported by the Danish State Art Foundation.

Liz Collins, Power Portal
Liz Collins, Power Portal, 2023–2024. Courtesy of the Artist and Candice Madey, New York. RISD Museum, Providence, RI. 

Liz Collins: Motherlode
Through January 11, 2026
RISD Museum
20 North Main Street
Providence, RI
https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/liz-collins

On July 19, the RISD Museum will open the first U.S. survey of artist Liz Collins’ genre-defying work. As the Museum explains, “For more than three decades, Collins has moved fluidly among the realms of fine art, fashion, and design, pushing material and technical boundaries to create works that evoke a depth of emotion, energy, and individual expression. The exhibition, titled Liz Collins: Motherlode, will feature more than 80 objects, capturing for the first time the full arc of Collins’ career from the 1980s to the present day. Motherlode includes important examples of her immersive textile installations and wallworks, intricate and monumental woven hangings, fashion, needlework, drawings, performance documentation, and ephemera. In keeping with the RISD Museum’s commitment to centering makers and broadening perspectives, the exhibition vividly showcases the trailblazing nature of Collins’ work as well as the artist’s deep commitment to illuminating Queer feminist creative practice and environmental activism.” Liz Collins: Motherlode will remain on view at RISD Museum through January 11, 2026. The exhibition is curated by Kate Irvin, RISD Museum’s department head and curator of costume and textiles.

Polly Sutton Facing the Unexpected
1ps Facing the Unexpected, Polly Adams Sutton, western red cedar bark, ash, spruce root, coated copper wire, 11.5” x 18” x 32”, 2013. Photo by Tom Grotta

State Fair: Growing American Craft
August 22 – September 7, 2026
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC
https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/state-fairs

Polly Adams Sutton‘s work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and will be featured in the Smithsonian’s upcoming exhibition, State Fair: Growing American Craft, which includes exceptional examples of American craft, highlighting personal stories and regional and cultural traditions.

Salts Mill roof We Will Sing
Installation in Salts Mill, Bradford, UK from We Will Sing. Photo by Ann Hamilton

We Will Sing
Through November 2, 2025
1A Aldermanbury
Bradford, UK
https://bradford2025.co.uk/event/we-will-sing

We Will Sing is a work of memory and imagining. Drawing on the origins of the textile processes that once filled the huge Salts Mill textile works built in 1853, a site-responsive installation by Ann Hamilton weaves together voice, song and printed word in a material surround made from raw and woven wool sourced from local textile companies H Dawson, based at Salts Mill, and William Halstead, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025. We Will Sing is the first major work created by Hamilton in the UK for more than 30 years, and the first time all three spaces on the vast top floor of Salts Mill have been combined to present a single artwork. (We’ve been big fans of Hamilton’s immersive installations since she transformed our neighborhood museum, the Aldrich, in the 1990s.)

Laura Foster Nicholson

Human Affects
Through October 4, 2025
Visions Museum of Textile Art
2825 Dewey Road
Suite 100
San Diego, CA
https://vmota.org/human-affects

Human Affects is a one-person exhibition at the Visions Museum of Textile Art featuring work by 
Laura Foster Nicholson. From 2020-2023, Nicholson made three related bodies of work about climate change: flooding in Venice, container ships, and the landscape and architecture of industrial agriculture and energy. A selected grouping of these themes comprises the exhibition at VMOTA, plus a few that focus more on the hope of renewable energy, careful farming, and a less destructive way of life.

And continuing:

Olga de Amaral
Olga de Amaral exhibition has moved from Paris (above) to Miami. Photo by Tom Grotta

Olga de Amaral
Through October 12, 2026
Institute of Contemporary Art
61 NE 41st Street
Miami, FL
https://icamiami.org/exhibition/olga-de-amaral

ICA Miami, in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, presents a major retrospective of the work of Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, bringing together more than 50 works from six decades, and featuring recent and historical examples, some of which have never been presented outside of her home country.

Ruth Asawa
Artist Ruth Asawa making wire sculptures, California, United States, November 1954;  image: Nat Farbman/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock; artwork: © 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., courtesy David Zwirner

Ruth Asawa: Retrospective
Through September 2, 2025
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
San Francisco, CA 
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ruth-asawa-retrospective

This first posthumous retrospective presents the full range of Ruth Asawa’s work and its inspirations over six decades of her career. As an artist, Asawa forged a groundbreaking practice through her ceaseless exploration of materials and forms.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction
September 13, 2025
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
https://press.moma.org/exhibition/woven-histories

Shan Goshen Baskets from the Woven Histories exhibition at the National Gallery, DC. Photo by Tom Grotta

An in-depth exhibition featuring 150 works that delves into the dynamic intersections between weaving and abstraction.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Everything is made of fiber
Through August 23, 2025
TextielMuseum
Goirkestraat 96
5046 GN Tilburg, the Netherlands
https://textielmuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/Abakanowicz

Magdalena Abakanowicz
Detail: Montana del Fuego, Magdalena Abakanowicz, 1986. Photo by Tom Grotta

The complete story of Abakanowicz’s work, life and legacy will be told at three locations in Brabant this spring. Abakanowicz was fascinated by the texture of textiles and the structure of natural fibres. She used this fascination as a basis for her weavings, but also to depict the human body.

Almost too many to choose from — fiber art continues its time in the spotlight!

Women Get the Nod – in Art at Least

November 20, 2024 0 Comment

We may not have seen the first female president in the US this year, but women are getting a well-deserved attention in the art world in 2024. We’ve previously written about women-centric exhibitions worth seeing: Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women which includes Lia Cook, Kay Sekimachi, Adela Akers, Katherine Westphal and may others, at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C, Sheila Hicks at the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop and the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf museums in Germany and Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay, at the National Museum of the American Indian. All of these run through the winter into at least January 2025. 

Olga de Amaral installation
Olga de Amaral installation at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Photo courtesy of Fondation Cartier.

But there are even more, exhibitions that highlight women as artists and art collectors and curators. Not to be missed are Olga de Amaral at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, Composing Color, the Paintings of Alma Thomas at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, and Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern at the Museum of Modern of Art in New York. 

The Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain is presenting the first major retrospective in Europe of Olga de Amaral, a key figure of the Colombian art scene and of Fiber Art. The exhibition brings together nearly 80 works made between the 1960s and now, many of which have never been shown before outside of Colombia. As the Museum explains, de Amaral’s unclassifiable work draws equally from the Modernist principles that she discovered studying at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in the United States, and the vernacular traditions of her country, as well as pre-Columbian art. The exhibition shines a light on the different periods that have characterized her artistic career: from her formal explorations (use of the grid, colors) to her experimentations (with materials and scale), as well as the influences that have nurtured her work (constructivist art, Latin-American handicrafts, the pre-Columbian era). The installation is breathtaking, with works hung in space amidst stones and sunlight. 

Alma Thomas, Elysian Fields
Alma Thomas, Elysian Fields, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 30.125″ x 42.25″, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of the artist, 1980.36.8

Composing Color explores the life of the groundbreaking American artist and educator, Alma Thomas, drawing on the extensive holdings of her paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). Thomas’s abstract style is distinct, where color is symbolic and multisensory, evoking sound, motion, temperature, and even scent. The exhibition is organized around the artist’s favorite themes of space, earth, and music.

Thomas was born in 1891 in Columbus, Georgia, She moved to Washington, DC, with her family when she was a teenager. She became Howard University’s first student to earn a degree in fine art in 1924 and went on to teach art in DC public schools for more than 30 years, as well as serving as vice-president of the Barnett Aden Gallery, one of the nation’s first racially integrated and Black-owned art galleries. In 1972, at the age of 80, Thomas presented solo exhibitions at both the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, earning her unprecedented recognition for a Black woman artist.

Henri Moore and Georgia O'Keefe
Henry Moore, Working Model for Locking Piece; Georgia O’Keefe, Jack in the Pulpit installation. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.

As one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century, Georgia O’Keeffe left an indelible mark on modernism—and American culture at large. In the exhibition Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore reveals how nature in its many forms—most notably flowers and desert landscapes—influenced O’Keefe’s art. The way she approached her work carried through to how she approached life in general, from the way she dressed to how she decorated her home. Featuring more than 150 works, Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore includes paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, as well as faithful recreations of each artist’s studio containing their tools and found objects. The studio installations illuminate the heart of their artistic practice—something rarely made visible in museum spaces—and create richer portraits of O’Keeffe and Moore by encouraging visitors to imagine how they worked and lived. This major exhibition is the first to bring these two artists into conversation, using compelling visual juxtapositions to explore their common ways of seeing. 

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern, at MoMA focuses on the collection and legacy of Lillie P. Bliss, one of the Museum’s three founders and an early advocate for modern art in the United States. On view from through March 29, 2025, the exhibition marks the 90th anniversary of Bliss’s bequest coming to MoMA and includes iconic works such as Paul Cézanne’s The Bather (c. 1885) and Amedeo Modigliani’s Anna Zborowska (1917). 

Lillie P. Bliss installation at the MOMA
Installation view of Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern, on view at The Museum of Modern Art, New York from November 17, 2024, through March 29, 2025. Photo: Emile Askey, courtesy MoMA.

Lilie P. Bliss accompanies the publication of MoMA’s book, Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art, a revelatory account of the Museum’s earliest years told through newly commissioned profiles of 14 women who had a decisive impact on the formation and development of the institution. Inventing the Modern comprises illuminating new essays on the women who, as founders, curators, patrons, and directors of various departments, made enduring contributions to MoMA during its early decades (especially between 1929 and 1945), creating new models for how to envision, establish, and operate a museum in an era when the field of modern art was uncharted territory. Bliss was an example of the women who shaped the Museum’s vision for modern art. When Bliss died, she left approximately 120 works to the Museum in her will. In an effort to ensure the Museum’s future success, Bliss stipulated that MoMA would receive her collection only if it could prove that it was on firm financial footing within three years of her death. In 1934 the Museum was able to secure the bequest, which became the core of MoMA’s collection. This included key works by Cézanne, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, Odilon Redon, Marie Laurencin, and Henri Matisse. Bliss’s bequest wisely allowed for the sale of her works to fund new acquisitions, facilitating the purchase of many important artworks, including Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, which is featured in Lillie P. Bliss exhibition.

Hope you can get to see one or more of these exceptional exhibitions!

Exhibitions/Locations/Dates
Olga de Amaral 
Fondation Cartier,  Paris, France
through March 16, 2025

Composing Color: the paintings of Alma Thomas
Denver Art Museum, Colorado
through January 12, 2025

Georgia O’Keefe and Henry Moore
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
through January 20, 2025

Lillie P. Bliss and the Birth of the Modern
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
through March 29, 2025

Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women
Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
through January 5, 2025

Sheila Hicks
Kunsthalle and Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop, Dusseldorf, Germany
through February 23, 2025

Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay
National Museum of the American Indian
through July 13, 2025

Acquisition News – Part I, US

July 28, 2021 0 Comment

We last reported on museum acquisitions of works by artists from browngrotta arts in 2019. There has been continued interest in acquiring work by these artists in the two years since by museums and art programs in the US and abroad. browngrotta arts has placed several works and acquisitions have occurred through the efforts of other galleries, artists and donors. As a result, we have a long list of aquisitions to report. In this, Part I, acquisitions in the Untied States:

Polly Adams Sutton
Polly Adams Sutton, Facing the Unexpected, 2013. Photo by Tom Grotta

Polly Adams Sutton

Polly Adams Sutton’s work Facing the Unexpected has been acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Musuem. It’s going to be part of the Renwick’s 50th anniversary exhibition in 2022.

Norma Minkowitz
Norma Minkowitz’s, Goodbye My Friend, 2017. Photo by Tom Grotta

Norma Minkowitz

Goodbye My Friend by Norma Minkowitz was gifted to the Renwick, Smithsonian American Art Museum, in memory of noted fiber art collector, Camille Cook.

Kiyomi Iwata
Kiyomi Iwata’s Red Aperture, 2009 and Fungus Three, 2018. Photos By Tom Grotta

Kiyomi Iwata 

Two works, Red Aperture and Fungus Three by Kiyomi Iwata were acquired by The Warehouse, MKE in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Two works by Iwata, Grey Orchid Fold V made in 1988, and Auric Grid Fold made in 1995 were donated to the Philadelphia Art Museum.

Adela Akers
Adela Akers, Traced Memories, 2007. Photo by Tom Grotta

Adela Akers

Adela Akers‘ work, Traced Memories from 2007 was acquired by the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California in 2020.

Dawn MacNutt
Dawn MacNutt’s, Larger Than Life, 2021.

Dawn MacNutt  

Dawn MacNutt’s 9 foot-high willow sculpture, Larger Than Life, was acquired by Longhouse Reserve in East Hampton, New York in 2021.

Naoko Serino
Naoko Serino’s Existing-2-D, 2017 and Generating Mutsuki, 2021. Photos by Tom Grotta

Naoko Serino

Two works by Naoko Serino, Generating Mutsuki and Existing 2-D, were acquired by The Warehouse, MKE in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ferne Jacobs

A work by Ferne Jacobs, Slipper, made in 1994, was donated to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Another, Centric Spaces, from 2000, was donated to Houston Museum of Fine Art.

Presence Absence Tunnel Four, 1990, by Lia Cook

Lia Cook

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) purchased Presence Absence Tunnel Four, 1990, by Lia Cook, in 2019.

Gyöngy Laky
Gyöngy Laky’s, Noise at Noon, 1996. Photo by Gyöngy Laky

Gyöngy Laky   

The Oakland Museum of California in California acquired Noise at Noon by Gyöngy Laky this year. In 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Historical Society, added That Word to its collection and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, added Ex Claim!  The Art in Embassies program of the US Department of State, acquired Seek, for the US embassy in Pristina, Kosovo.

Congratulations to the artists and acquiring organizations!