Textiles at the Metropolitan

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1996 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Some ninety-four hundred square feet of the textile center are devoted to conservation. There fifteen conservators research and restore the objects, organize the archival records, prepare the textiles for either exhibition or storage, and treat them at either dry or wet work stations. All of the wet-work cleaning is accomplished using demineralized water. Work done with dry solvents is allocated to a nearby space devoted to microscopy, physical testing, fading tests, and color analysis. Another area is used to dye the yarns utilized in the restoration of antique textiles.

Of great benefit to visiting scholars and the museum's own staff is a computerized study center. Information about each object in the collection will be instantly retrievable through computer terminals installed in the textile library. Digitalized images of each piece are a valuable part of the database and will prolong the life of the textiles themselves, which will not have to be handled so frequently.

Because the variety of textiles in the collection is so vast, the ways of storing them differ according to their size, weight, and condition (from fragile to stable). A different storage method was developed for each category of textile, and the custom-made components utilize a wide range of materials, from paper to Plexiglas. In all cases the textiles are stored out of the light.

To celebrate the opening of the center, several curatorial departments have organized textile exhibitions drawn from their holdings. American Schoolgirl Needlework: "When This You See Remember Me," was assembled by Amelia Peck of the department of American decorative arts. She has selected fifty marking samplers, pictorial samplers, coats of arms, silk mourning pictures and family records, and needlework pictures created between 1740 and 1860. The show remains on view through February 18.

The entrance gallery of the textile center, where rotating textile exhibitions will always be on view, is the site of Medieval and Early Renaissance Tapestries, organized by Tom Campbell of the department of European sculpture and decorative arts. On view until March 31 are six remarkable Flemish tapestries, all with religious themes, which are believed to have been woven in Brussels between 1490 and 1510. Two stylistically and thematically related tapestries have been loaned to the museum by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Marsha Hill of the Egyptian art department has organized Textiles of Late Antiquity, which includes approximately seventy richly decorated textiles that adorned Egyptian interiors and later shrouded corpses, as well as clothes that were worn primarily at the time of burial. Dating from the fourth to seventh century, they have survived in large part because of Egypt's arid climate. Textiles made during the early Islamic period (late seventh through tenth centuries) are also on view and demonstrate that while the technology for making textiles had changed, many of the decorative motifs endured for a long time before being assimilated into the Islamic aesthetic. This exhibition is on view until April 7.