Highlights from “Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles”

ZOOM VIRTUAL PROGRAM

10 am Pacific Daylight Time, Saturday, October 30, 2021
with
Ling-en Lu, Ph.D., Curator of East Asian Art

Kimberly Masteller, Ph.D., Jeanne McCray Beals
Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art

&

Yayoi Shinoda, Assistant Curator of East Asian Art

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Kansas City, Missouri

For the first time in decades, rarely seen Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish clothing and textiles from the collection of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art are assembled for an extraordinary exhibition. Made with fine materials, exemplary techniques, and superb artistry, Asian luxury textiles were prized domestically and were central to global trade.
The exhibition traces the journeys of key works of art and the people who owned them and carried them across the world. Luxurious costumes of the court performed power, while striking theater robes brought stage characters to life. Sturdy wall hangings and furniture covers transformed palaces, temples, and homes, while shimmering tapestry-woven carpets were created as diplomatic gifts for foreign rulers.

Artists borrowed techniques from near and far to appeal to the latest fashions in the developing global market. The extraordinary stories of these treasures of the collection take visitors on a journey across continents, from the 1500s to today. Included in this talk will be two outstanding and historically important classical Persian carpets; velvet tent hunting fragments and some Kashmir shawls and hangings; several Chinese court robes and interior furnishings; and Japanese theatre robes and Meiji-era tapestries.

Please join our presenters, curators Dr. Kimberly Masteller, Dr. Ling-en Lu, and Yayoi Shinoda in Kansas City as they present some of the textile masterworks in this special exhibition.

Admission is free for this program.

Registration: https://tinyurl.com/TmaSplendorFnC