Woven Histories

"This major looker of an exhibition catalog loosens up the warp and weft of conventional views of modern art—all those tight-knotted hierarchical categories (high versus low, art versus craft) on which our institutions and markets still rest—and demonstrates the universe of formal and conceptual brilliance that has always traveled on a parallel track. The sheer variety of work produced by more than 50 artists chosen by the book’s editor, Lynne Cooke, will knock your socks off. (Just wait till you see what’s happening in the field of basketry alone.) So will the visual imaginations of individual geniuses we already know like Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa, Gego, Lenore Tawney and Sheila Hicks, and the others we’re introduced to here." * New York Times, on "Best Art Books of 2023" *
"In centering weaving—thread, fiber, and cloth—Woven Histories differently tracks adaptations from within the frame of its traditions." * Brooklyn Rail *
"Another welcome distinguishing feature [of this exhibition] is the excellent catalogue, featuring essays by several of the field’s leading scholars. . . . Cooke’s volume . . .  will serve as a permanent record of this expansive moment in the history of an unjustly neglected art form." * Art in America *
"Placing textiles — and centrally weaving — at the heart of modern abstract art, Cooke selected from the work of around fifty textile artists. She also invited five art critics to respond to the thorny issues raised when weaving and abstract art are linked. Most powerfully, six contemporary fiber artists were asked to draw on their creative perspectives to comment on the works of other fiber artists in the show. . . . Cooke’s majestic compendium of woven artists contains over one hundred finely reproduced illustrations." * Arts Fuse *
"Woven Histories, edited by Cooke, addresses a long overdue realignment of the role of textiles in relation to modernist and contemporary art and architecture. . . . a comprehensive and illuminating collection of scholarly writings that bring new focus to fascinating aspects of textile history." * Galleries West *
"Woven Histories makes clear that the relationship between textiles and modernist abstraction is multifarious. The artists working at the intersection of the textile medium and the abstract mode enter a variety of different conceptual, aesthetic, technical, and technological spaces, some embracing handicraft traditions within a feminist context, others producing eccentric geometries, others moving toward new mechanics of making, and much more." * Women's Art Journal *