As an artist, working with what you have can be one of the most subversive—and liberating—enterprises. It is surely the mainstay of the contemporary craft movement, which emerged midcentury and now occupies the interest of galleries, museums and, significantly, the public.

Not surprisingly, working with what you have is also freighted with the resounding echo of women’s work. For example, Anni Albers noted that when she enrolled in the New Bauhaus, Dessau in 1925, she took up weaving because the sculpture courses, her main interest at the time, were open only to men. She studied with renowned master artists such as Paul Klee, Georg Muche, and Johannes Itten, who taught her to master composition, color, and space. This opened up a world of possibilities for Albers, in which she could play with the number of threads, materials, and colors, and produce in series. Above: Lia Cook, Su Series Installation, 2016

Unlike painting, where the gesture is free, weaving is constrained by the structural ‘grid’ of the loom, whose various rules enable a pattern to be created or developed by interweaving threads. The creation of a pattern is called a “weave,” which conveys the idea of rigidity rather than flexibility. Here in New York City, textile artist Leonore Tawney, who figures largely in the book The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever, left her native Chicago when her art dealer refused to market her work to fine art collectors, having pigeonholed her as a crafter whose work could be imitated by housewives with time on their hands. Above: Anni Albers at the New Bauhaus, Dessau; photo courtesy of Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin

On arriving here, Tawney reinvented weaving, producing pieces that sometimes reached 27 feet, the height of her loft on Coenties Slip. Tawney’s alternative approach “allowed the artist to attain a remarkably close relationship between drawing and weaving,” said Florica Zaharia, former conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Above: Anni Albers at the New Bauhaus, Dessau; photo courtesy of Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin

Currently on view at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, which is dedicated to the art of crafting, is Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women. The exhibition considers the important contributions of women to modernism in postwar visual culture, an era when painting, sculpture, and architecture were dominated by men. Working with what they had, women made considerablecontributions to contemporary art, with alternative materials such as textiles, ceramics, and metals. Above: Installation of weavings by Leonore Tawney in Pathmakers: Women in Art, Craft and Design, Midcentury and Today at Museum of Arts and Design

Largely unexamined in major art historical surveys, either due to their gender or choice of materials, these pioneering women achieved success and international recognition, establishing a model of professional identity for future generations of women in the arts. 

The thirty-three selected artworks piece together an alternative history of American art. Accessible and familiar, fiber handicrafts have long provided a source of inspiration for women. Their ingenuity with cloth, threads, and yarn was dismissed by many art critics as menial labor.

The artists in this exhibition took up fiber to complicate this historic marginalization and revolutionize its import to contemporary art. They drew on personal experiences, particularly their vantage points as women, and intergenerational skills to transform humble threads into resonant and intricate artworks.

Left: Leonore Tawney in her Coenties Slip loft

All of the artworks are drawn from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection. Adela Akers, Neda Al-Hilali, Emma Amos, Lia Cook, Olga de Amaral, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, Sheila Hicks, Agueda Martínez, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Scott, Judith Scott, Kay Sekimachi, Lenore Tawney, Katherine Westphal, Claire Zeisler, and Marguerite Zorach.  The artists expressed themselves in the form of sewn quilts, woven tapestries and rugs, beaded and embroidered ornamentation, twisted and bound sculptures, and multi-media assemblages. Each artwork carries the story of its maker, manifesting—stitch by stitch—the profound and personal politics of the hand.

The exhibition website features recorded interviews from the Archives of American Art, in which the artists share their ideas on their lives in art

Continuing through January 5, 2025 at the Renwick Gallery, Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC Info