Wall Hangings was an exhibition of textile fiber art at

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

from 25 February to 4 May 1969. It was planned in 1966 and toured 11 cities in 1968–1969.

About

Wall Hangings Exhibition was curated by

Mildred Constantine Mildred Constantine Bettelheim (June 28, 1913 – December 10, 2008) was an American curator who helped bring attention to the posters and other graphic design in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in the 1950s and 1960s Biography Co ...

and

Jack Lenor Larsen Jack Lenor Larsen (August 5, 1927 – December 22, 2020) was an American textile designer, author, collector and promoter of traditional and contemporary craftsmanship. Through his career he was noted for bringing fabric patterns and textiles to ...

and featured 28 Artists from 8 countries. It was the first major art exhibition in

fiber arts Fiber art (fibre art in British spelling) refers to fine art whose material consists of natural or synthetic fiber and other components, such as fabric or yarn. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labor on the part of the artist as ...

or textiles. This exhibition showcased the artists’ work in ways not typically seen before like hanging from the ceiling, standing free from the wall, and even on revolving turntables to allow visual access to the great details put into every pieces displayed. Artworks were noted for their techniques, material, scale and three-dimensionality and were referenced both to their break from and use of tradition in those areas. The history of the artists in the show were directly attributed to the Austrian Wiener Werkstätte and the German

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

, though mention was made of other inspirations such as

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

Peruvian

weavers Weaver or Weavers may refer to: Activities * A person who engages in weaving fabric Animals * Various birds of the family Ploceidae * Crevice weaver spider family * Orb-weaver spider family * Weever (or weever-fish) Arts and entertainment ...

Ideology

The 19 December 1968 Press release by the

for the exhibition Wall Hangings states: "During the last 10 years, developments in weaving have caused us to revise our concepts of this craft and view the work within the context of twenty-first century art. The weavers from eight countries represented in this exhibition are not part of the fabric industry, but of the world of art. They have extended the formal possibilities of weaving, frequently using complex and unique techniques."

Impact

The only national art world press was written by

Louise Bourgeois Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (; 25 December 191131 May 2010) was a French-American artist. Although she is best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, Bourgeois was also a prolific painter and printmaker. She explored a varie ...

for ''

Craft Horizons ''Craft Horizons'' is a periodical magazine that documents and exhibits crafts, craft artists, and other facets of the field of American craft. The magazine was founded by Aileen Osborn Webb and published from 1941 to 1979. It included editoria ...

'' and was negative and suggested that the work was not fine art. As craft theorist Elissa Auther states in her 2009 book ''String Felt & Thread'': "Despite the awareness of the negative art world attitudes concerning media traditionally associated with the crafts, the strategy Constantine and Larsen adopted to assert fiber's art status was to introduce the new genre into the fine art world on the terms set by that world."

Participating artists

References

{{Reflist Museum of Modern Art (New York City) exhibitions 1969 in art Fabric sculptures Textile arts Textile arts exhibitions