GLORIA F. ROSS: REBIRTH OF MODERN TAPESTRY will run at Jane Kahan Fine Art, 330 East 59th St., from 15 February through 25 March 2011. Special hours for this show are Tuesday through Friday 10 am – 5 pm. Jane Kahan Fine Art is otherwise open by appointment only. The main Jane Kahan Gallery is located at 922 Madison Avenue (73rd Street).

The Jane Kahan Gallery will open its new exhibition space with a show devoted to more than a dozen rare tapestries by American artists, edited by Gloria F. Ross.

To read more about the exhibition and its opening on Friday, February 11, click HERE.

For more about Ann Hedlund’s lecture at the gallery on Thursday, February 17, click HERE.

Also, save April 15 for a panel discussion in New York, featuring Archie Brennan, Grace Glueck and Ann Hedlund on “Tapestry as Modern Art” at SOFA-NYC - click HERE.

It is with great regret that we announce the cancellation of three lectures originally scheduled during January 2011 in California. Speaker Ann Hedlund has sustained a back injury that prevents her from traveling in the near future. Please visit www.tapestrystudies.wordpress.com for other plans as they evolve.

• Cancelled: Saturday, January 8, 2011, 10 am – “Louise Nevelson and Archie Brennan: From Collage to Tapestry,” lecture/presentation, Santa Barbara Fiber Arts Guild, Santa Barbara, California.
• Cancelled: Saturday, January 15, 2011, 10:30 am – “Tapestries Made After Paintings: From the Dovecot to Ganado, from Brennan to Begay,” lecture/presentation, Tapestry Weavers West, Sausalito, California.
• Cancelled: Sunday, January 16, 2011, 2:oo pm – “Louise Nevelson and Archie Brennan: From Collage to Tapestry,” lecture/book-signing, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, San Jose, California.

Tina Kane’s new book, The Troyes Mémoire: The Making of a Medieval Tapestry, has been published by Boydell & Brewer. To read more about it, click HERE. To order the book, click HERE. Congratulations to Tina on this great accomplishment!!!

To learn more about our new book, Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry, please visit our brand new and continually evolving website - http://tapestrystudies.wordpress.com/. We look forward to receiving your comments.

The 12th Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of American will be held on October 5-9, 2010, in Lincoln, Nebraska. There is a program and schedule at this link. Highlights regarding tapestry studies include:

Thursday, Oct. 7, 1:30 - 3:15 PM
Session 3 Negotiating the Handmade in a Cyber World—Arbor I (organized session)
Mary Lane, chair and discussant
> 1. Abetting the Handmade; Rebecca Stevens
> 2. Handwork as a Conceptual Strategy; Jane Kidd
> 3. Woven Images: All Techniques Considered; Tommye Scanlin
> 4. Future Reliquaries; Barbara Heller

Thursday, Oct. 7, GALLERY NIGHT
5:30-9:45 Buses circulate every 15-20 minutes from The Cornhusker Marriott to Galleries
American Tapestry Biennial 8 (ATB8) Reception, Elder Gallery, Nebraska Wesleyan University

Friday, Oct. 8, 10:15-12:00 PM
Session 3 From the Physical to the Metaphysical—Arbor I
> 1. The Landscape Tapestries of Louise Nevelson, 1972-1997; Ann Lane Hedlund (followed by 3 others papers on various topics)

Friday, Oct. 8, 2:00-4:30 PM
Site Seminar 2: University of Nebraska State Museum, the Cooper Gallery at Morrill Hall Exhibition: “A Turning Point: Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century.” Weaving demonstrations by Navajo weavers Martha Schultz, Lola S. Cody and Melissa Cody. [Exhibit is open Oct. 1 through Nov. 30, see below]

Saturday, Oct. 9, 1:30-3:15 PM
Session 3 Tapestry: Voices From the Past Lead into the Future—
Arbor I (organized session) Susan Iverson, chair and discussant
> 1. Geometric Abstraction in Pre-Columbian Tapestry and its Enduring Influence; Susan Iverson
> 2. Development of a Personal and Non-Pictorial Style in Contemporary Tapestry; Michael Rohde
> 3. Contemporary Interpretation of an Unusual Navajo Weaving Technique; Connie Lippert
> 4. Low Tech Transmission: European Tapestry to High Tech America; Christine Laffer

Hope to see many participants in Lincoln next week!

“A Turning Point: Navajo Weaving in the Late 20th Century” will be on view from October 1 through November 30, 2010, at the University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln. The exhibition will be hosted by the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, from February 6 through March 2011. To read more, click here.

Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry

Ann Lane Hedlund, with a foreword by Grace Glueck

Yale University Press, in association with Arizona State Museum

Expected publication date: November 2010

To pre-order your own copy and to see more details, click here.

This beautiful book illuminates the ambitious career of Gloria F. Ross, a renowned editeur of tapestries who collaborated with many leading modern artists and weaving studios during the late twentieth century.

Gloria F. Ross (1923-1998) described her work as the translation of paint into wool. She was deeply committed to reinventing the centuries-old art of tapestry, particularly championing the handmade in contemporary art. This remarkable book, written by textile scholar Ann Lane Hedlund, draws from rare unpublished archives to unravel the evolution of Ross’s modern tapestries and to illuminate the significance of her creative partnerships.

Gloria F. Ross and Modern Tapestry features the collaborative work of twenty-eight acclaimed modernist painters and sculptors, including Helen Frankenthaler (Ross’s sister), Kenneth Noland, and Louise Nevelson, with several dozen traditional-yet-innovative weavers in France, Scotland, and the Southwestern United States. Brief biographies of the artists, letters, notes, sketches, and photographs illustrate the practical and aesthetic challenges that occupied Gloria Ross for over three decades.

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Ann Lane Hedlund is curator of ethnology at the Arizona State Museum and professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She directs the University’s Gloria F. Ross Tapestry Program. Before “retiring,” Grace Glueck was an art reporter, editor, and critic in The New York Times Cultural News Department for more than three decades.

The GFR Center for Tapestry Studies, Inc., has recently transformed into the newly formed Gloria F. Ross Tapestry Program at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Our staff energies and activities remain strong. The Center’s corporate assets have been transferred to the University of Arizona Foundation on behalf of this new entity, now an integral part of the University and still located on campus in the Arizona State Museum (ASM). This required detailed and protective legal arrangements with the New York State Attorney General, the Arizona Corporation Commission, the University’s Board of Regents, and the GFR Center’s Board of Trustees.

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The mission of the new GFR Tapestry Program remains identical to that of the original Center: to foster the creative practice and cultural study of tapestry, handwoven worldwide from ancient to modern times. The GFR Tapestry Program remains devoted to research and public programming,” says program director Ann Hedlund.

We extend our deep appreciation to the Gloria F. Ross Foundation in New York, for its sustaining support over the past twelve years. We are grateful to GFR Center’s former Board of Trustees, who worked through the process of corporate dissolution and who were always ready to remind us of our most important goals—to continue sharing the wonderful world of textiles with as many people as possible. Thank you to Alice Zrebiec, Ramona Sakiestewa, Susan Brown McGreevy, and Margi Fox, outgoing (and outstanding!) trustees. Thanks also to Ann Bookman, Archie Brennan, Helena Hernmarck, Hal Einhorn, Lotus Stack, and Sue Walker, who were extremely helpful and encouraging during previous board terms. We are very grateful to our past Associates, who supported our many programs through their membership during the past twelve years.

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In the meantime, our five-year project to produce a major book, Gloria F. Ross & Modern Tapestry, is in the design phase. The 376-page book with many brilliant color illustrations will be available from Yale University Press in autumn 2010; see their online catalogue. Watch for more about this soon!

Illustration: Arizona State Museum, 2010. Photo by Dennis Nendza.

Curated by Anna Byrd Mays, the American Tapestry Alliance presents an online gallery of many tapestries by Archie Brennan, along with essays that provide fresh insights into his work.

See this retrospective exhibition of impressive work at
http://www.americantapestryalliance.org/Exhibitions/WebExh.html.

AN ILLUSTRATED LECTURE by Alice Zrebiec, sponsored by the Stark Museum of Art

TITLE: “Making Tapestry an American Art: The Legacy of Lorentz Kleiser.”

WHEN:  Friday, January 22, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

Originally inspired by European masterpieces, artist Lorentz Kleiser (1879-1963) turned to American literature, history, flora and fauna as subjects for tapestries designed for public buildings as well as private homes. Founder of the Edgewater Tapestry Looms in New Jersey, Kleiser was instrumental in introducing tapestry to the general public both through his work and his nationwide lectures.”

WHERE: Lutcher Theater, 707 Main Street, Orange, Texas 77630

Followed by Reception at the Stark Museum of Art

712 Green Avenue, Orange, Texas 77630

IN ASSOCIATION WITH the current exhibition:

“Entwined across the Ages: Illuminated Manuscripts and Tapestries”

November 21, 2009 January 30, 2010

This holiday-season exhibition features the Stark Museum of Arts collection of medieval illuminated manuscripts exhibited within a setting of twentieth-century wall tapestries that were inspired by arts from the medieval period. Entwined across the Ages highlights the variety and richness of manuscript illustrations in the Books of Hours and includes images of the Christmas story. It also reveals how the medieval arts influenced artist Lorentz Kleiser whose Edgewater Tapestry Company revived the art of tapestry weaving in the modern era.”