OTTAWA.- A new major exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada opens up an undiscovered chapter of art history: Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction. The exhibition explores the inseparable histories of modern abstraction and 20th-century textiles, specifically the changing relationship between abstract art, fashion, design and craft over the last 70 years.

Some 130 works – including painting, photography, clothing, textiles, drawing, basketry and sculpture – by more than 45 creators spanning generations and continents are put into dialogue. Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Jeffrey Gibson, Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin and Rosemarie Trockel are among the artists whose works are on display in the show. Women artists are particularly well represented in the exhibition, as are artists working outside established arts centres.

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Ottawa presentation is the third and only Canadian stop on a North American tour that began at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (September 17, 2023 - January 21, 2024) and The National Gallery of Art, Washington (March 17 – July 28, 2024). The tour will conclude at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, from April 20 to September 13, 2025.

The works on display come from the collections of several international museums, public and private collections, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., among others.

“In the 20th century, textiles have often been considered lesser—as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. This unique exhibition brings to the Canadian public important works that could otherwise only be seen in galleries and museums abroad, thanks to our fruitful partnership with the American museums,” said Jean-François Bélisle, Director & CEO, National Gallery of Canada.

Curated by Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Woven Histories explores how recurrent aesthetic, socio-political and economic forces, in particular concerns about labour and environmental degradation, have influenced textiles art. Among other subjects, it focuses on questions of self-fashioning and life wear as modes of constructing identity, kinship and community.

Some of the artists seek to bring about social change, while others address political issues. Others engage with textiles as subject, material and technique, revitalizing the formal conventions of abstraction or critiquing its patriarchal history and gendered identity. Open weave wall hangings from the post-war decades explore formal relations between line and thread. For textile makers, as for contemporary abstract painters, the grid and computer chip were foundational structural forms that generated innovative design. The exhibition also addresses basketry as a pre-loom textile art.

Exhibition catalogue

Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction is accompanied by a publication co-published by the National Gallery of Art and University of Chicago Press. The 292-page book features essays by art historians Elissa Auther, Lynne Cooke, Darby English, Briony Fer, Michelle Kuo, and Bibiana K. Obler, contributing new scholarship to this complex, layered subject, as well as reflections from peers, contributing to the exhibition narratives.