Ikat Textile Exhibitions

Installation from To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia

If you live in North America and are serious about textiles, please consider visiting Washington D.C. before these remarkable exhibitions close in July.

At the Smithsonian's Sackler gallery until 29 July is To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia. It brings together about thirty of the finest historical Central Asian ikat hangings and coats from the Freer|Sackler collections, donated by Guido Goldman, as well as several of Oscar de la Renta’s iconic creations.

The aim is to explore the original use and function of these dazzling fabrics and the enduring appeal of their extraordinary designs.

Over at the George Washington University Textile Museum until 9 July is the exhibition Binding the Clouds: The Art of Central Asian Ikat. This exhibition also celebrates the the artistic innovation of 19th-century Uzbekistan.

It showcases 32 ikat hangings from the collection of 100 textiles donated to the Museum's collections again by Guido Goldman. A lifelong lover of the arts, Goldman became enchanted with Central Asian ikats through a chance sighting of a colorful ikat hanging in a New York gallery's window in 1975.

Ikat fabric produced in Bukhara 1800 -1850

Sebastian Smee, a Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post, recently reviewed the two exhibits. 

Smee himself is a strong advocate for ikat. “If I could see only one kind of art for the rest of my life, it’s easy. Textiles. Uzbekistani textiles. No question about it,” he writes.

Related posts:
Robert Rauschenberg: Samarkand Stitches 
Ikat: The "Thread That Connects Generations"
The Story of Uzbek Silk Production
Oscar de la Renta's Love Affair with Uzbek Ikat
Uzbek Ikat DNA Project