Information - THE JEWISH MUSEUM HOSTS THE FIRST EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK OF HISTORIC IKAT COLLECTION

Information - History: "

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RARE SILKS FROM
THE OASIS KINGDOMS OF CENTRAL ASIA
COME TO THE JEWISH MUSEUM

THE JEWISH MUSEUM HOSTS THE FIRST EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK OF HISTORIC IKAT COLLECTION

An ancient textile art practiced by master craftsmen in the kingdoms of Bukhara and Samarkand, along the fabled Silk Route, will be celebrated in Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia from the Guido Goldman Collection, on view at The Jewish Museum from February 7 through May 16, 1999. More than forty rare wall hangings, mounted panels and robes, each boldly and intricately patterned and strongly colored, have been drawn from the Guido Goldman Collection, the largest and finest private collection of Central Asian ikats in the world. Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia from the Guido Goldman Collection comes to The Jewish Museum from showings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; and the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C. Following its New York showing, the exhibition will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago (September, 1999 - January, 2000) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Spring 2000). The exhibition is being circulated by the American Foundation for Textile Art, Inc.

Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia from the Guido Goldman Collection examines a remarkable century-long cultural revival of the art of ikat making that took place at the turn of the 19th century in Central Asia, when that area had become a forgotten backwater of the Islamic world. At a time when local crafts around the world were being overtaken by the products of European industry, hand-crafts along the Silk Route, particularly in Bukhara and Samarkand, benefitted from isolation and cultural conservatism. However, the flowering of the art of ikat lasted only a short time; by the late 1800s the introduction of synthetic dyes ended the production of such richly hued, hand-dyed textiles as those represented in the Guido Goldman Collection.

Ikat (a Malay-Indonesian word) is an intricate technique in which threads are patterned by repeated binding and dyeing before they are woven. In traditional ikat making, also called resist-dye weaving, the design is painstakingly dyed directly onto the fabric's individual threads, yielding a diffuse, richly colored pattern. This method has been practiced around the world for centuries, from Indonesia and Japan to India, Africa and the Americas. But it was in the 19th century, along the Silk Route in Bukhara, that ikat experienced its greatest growth, particularly in textiles of dazzling color and patterning.

In the Central Asian cities of Bukhara and Samarkand and in the towns of the Ferghana Valley - along the fabled Silk Route in what is now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan - ikat production involved guild-trained craftsmen of many backgrounds. While Tadjiks specialized in the dyeing of the red and yellow colors, and Uzbeks and Iranis were the weavers, Jews controlled the dyeing and trade of indigo blue. Fabrication of ikats required a complex, communal technical process involving all of these different ethnic groups. The process was so intricate that it sometimes took as long as two months to dye and weave just one ikat wall hanging. The exhibition captures the brief moment in the 19th century when the art of ikat was in full flower.

Offering striking parallels to abstract paintings of the modern era, ikat fabrics often underscored their owners' wealth and social prominence. Ikat weavings were made into robes and hangings that were frequently part of a woman's dowry and clothing that defined the wearer's social position as well as into fabrics that accompanied all life cycle rituals, covering everything from the wedding bed to the casket. For example, the "bride price" paid by a Jewish groom in 1874 was calculated in bolts of fabric, fine clothing and ikat robes. The vibrantly-colored wall hangings embellished mud-plastered walls and doors of homes, symbolically transforming them into gardens, and were used to construct outdoor pavilions for ceremonial occasions.

Highlights of the exhibition include an extraordinary Samarkand wall hanging, featuring delicate motifs based on triangular amulets and jewelry commonly worn in Central Asia, against a vibrant yellow background; a woman's robe of deep colors, including indigo, possibly part of a bride's wedding attire; and a six-panel wall hanging depicting pomegranates descending from stalks, in which the designer, to show his skill, introduced pairs of water jugs mixed among the pomegranates.

In a "Collector's Note" in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Dr. Guido Goldman explains: "My enthusiasm for Central Asian ikats stems from a lifelong love of color. I was privileged to grow up in a home filled with art, primarily a collection of French Impressionist paintings...While drawn to these canvases, my favorite galleries when visiting museums as a teenager were those filled with German expressionists... especially the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky...I feel there was a direct link between a Kandinsky painting that belonged to a close friend of my parents and my subsequent fascination with Central Asian ikats." Dr. Goldman has also remarked "I saw them as wonderfully bold, colorful, individual works of art that moved me in the same way as did a painting by Kandinsky, Morris Louis or Frankenthaler." Although Dr. Goldman did not set out to build an important collection, he noted, he was attracted to ikats as "textile paintings," and the collection he assembled and is exhibiting throughout the country has enabled him to share his enthusiasm for these beautiful textiles with a wider public.

Ikat: Splendid Silks of Central Asia from the Guido Goldman Collection is being circulated by the American Foundation for Textile Art, Inc. established in 1996 to foster the presentation, interpretation and preservation of textiles as vital cultural artifacts. With the cooperation of the foundation, a non-profit organization based in New York, the exhibition has been coordinated at The Jewish Museum by Assistant Curator Claudia Nahson. Gail Martin, a New York-based textile expert and curator of the Goldman Collection, has been the project consultant.

The exhibition will be accompanied by two publications: an illustrated 208-page catalogue with 70 color plates, featuring text by Kate Fitz Gibbon and Andrew Hale and a preface by Stuart Cary Welch, available for $39.50 in the Museum's Cooper Shop; and a catalogue raisonn� containing extensive additional documentation and more than 400 color illustrations, available in the Cooper Shop for $250. Both books are published by Laurence King (London, England) with Alan Marcuson as editorial and art director.

The exhibition at The Jewish Museum is made possible in part by generous contributions from OFFITBANK and Nathalie and Charles de Gunzburg.

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