The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design Without End - Video

Exhibition dates: September 30, 2008–April 5, 2009 Dazzling textile traditions have constituted an important form of aesthetic expression throughout Africa’s history and cultural landscape. Textiles have long been a focal point of the vast continental trading networks that carried material culture and technological innovations across regional centers and linked Africa to the outside world. Leading contemporary artists reflecting on Africa’s distinctive cultural heritage and its relationship to the world at large have drawn upon the imagery of textiles in sculpture, painting, photography, installation art, video, and other media. This exhibition illustrates the stunningly diverse classical textile genres created by artists in West Africa through some of their earliest documented and finest works. Above: (Detail) Between Earth and Heaven, 2006; El Anatsui (Ghanaian, b. 1944); Purchase, Fred M. and Rita Richman, Noah-Sadie K. Wachtel Foundation Inc., David and Holly Ross, Doreen and Gilbert Bassin Family Foundation and William B. Goldstein Gifts, 2007 (2007.96)