Spring Exhibition: Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity

ISAW’s Exhibition team is pleased to announce this Spring’s upcoming show, Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity, which will be open to the public from February 25—May 22, 2016. Designing Identity will display over fifty garments and furnishings that illuminate the ways in which textiles conveyed gender ideals and cultural values. The clothing that will be on view includes nearly complete tunics, tailored shirts, children’s clothing, a doll’s costume, and several fragmentary mantles, all serving as typical Late Antique garments used by men, women, and children. Furthermore, wall-hangings and domestic textiles will show how they contributed to the overall aesthetic environment of the home with their motifs, colors, textures, and design, while also speaking to the identity of the household and the specific spaces in which they were located. Designing Identity provides intimate glimpses of lives that ended over a millennium ago and will explore how the textiles produced social and cultural meaning in Late Antiquity.

We hope you will come by in February to admire and learn more about these stunning Late Antique garments and furnishings!

Tunic with Dionysian Motifs. Tapestry weave of dyed wool, undyed linen, plain (tabby) ground weave of undyed linen. L. 269.5 cm; W. 181.5 cm. Panopolis (Akhmim), Egypt, early 6th century CE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Edward S. Harkness, 1926 (26.9.8) Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY