Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Connecticut College
New London, CT
860.443.2545
Southwest Weaving: A Continuum
Lyman Allyn Museum of Art at Connecticut
College announces a major textile exhibition, Southwest Weaving: A Continuum,
now on view in the museum's main Palmer Galleries, and remaining on view
through August 22, 1999.
The
second in a series of exhibitions of Native American Art from the San Diego
Museum of Man, Southwest Weaving:A Continuum brings together works
from the distinct yet interrelated weaving traditions of Southwestern Pueblo
communities, Navajo groups, and New Mexican Hispanic villages. This watershed
exhibition traces more than 140 years of dazzling creativity, demonstrating
once again the extraordinary breadth and depth of the museum' s collection
of Native American textiles. (Left: Navajo Yei Rug,
c. 1900-1910; Right: Navajo Rug, c. 1935-1940)
Due in large part to their rarity, some of the most striking
artifacts in the exhibition 
come from the selection of Pueblo textiles. Most of
the antique Pueblo weavings that survive were intended only for ritual use,
and seldom appear in public collections. By contrast, the exquisite contemporary
works made by male weavers at the Hopi and San Felipe villages in New Mexico
were created mainly for sale to other Native Americans, and thus survive
in greater quantity.
Women were the principal weavers in Navajo culture, a tradition
of production that dates back 300 years. Even today, spider webs are rubbed
on the fingertips of young girls to ensure that they will grow up to become
good weavers, a practice derived from ancient histories that trace the inception
of weaving to the Spider Grandmother who first taught the art to Navajo
women. The examples of Navajo textiles in the exhibition are drawn from
the Classic period (c. 1650 - 1865), the Transitional period (c. 1865 -
1895), and the Rug Era(c. 1895 - present). A wide variety of blankets, parade
saddle covers, rugs, pictorials, and curious novelty weavings attests to
the rich heritage of Navajo textile practice.
The hybrid culture of the Hispanic villages of New Mexico,
whose inhabitants were a mix of Spanish peasant settlers and native Pueblos,
resulted in a distinctive weaving tradition that forms the third part of
Southwest Weaving:A Continuum. Represented in this section is a selection
of Rio Grande blankets, with their splendid rhythmic compositions in black,
blue, and white thought to have been woven by Navajo captives within the
already mixed confines of the Hispanic village. The history of the Rio Grande
blankets, like much of the weaving in this exhibition, reveals the complex
relationships between Native Americans, Spanish and mestizo settlers, and
the encroaching eastern American culture.
Southwest Weaving: A Continuum
is one of three national traveling exhibitions in the series The Vision
Persists: Native Folk Arts of the West, organized by the San Diego Museum
of Man, sponsored by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and circulated
by Curatorial Assistance, Inc., Los Angeles.
Read more about the Lyman
Allyn Art Museum in the Resource
Library
Search for more articles
and essays on American art in Resource Library. See America's Distinguished Artists
for biographical information on historic artists.
This page was originally published in 1999 in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information.
Copyright 2012 Traditional
Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit
corporation. All rights reserved.
The
second in a series of exhibitions of Native American Art from the San Diego
Museum of Man, Southwest Weaving:A Continuum brings together works
from the distinct yet interrelated weaving traditions of Southwestern Pueblo
communities, Navajo groups, and New Mexican Hispanic villages. This watershed
exhibition traces more than 140 years of dazzling creativity, demonstrating
once again the extraordinary breadth and depth of the museum' s collection
of Native American textiles. (Left: Navajo Yei Rug,
c. 1900-1910; Right: Navajo Rug, c. 1935-1940)
