Exhibition Reviewed in the New York Times

ISAW's current exhibition Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity is now on view through May 22, 2016. Designing Identity offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those who commissioned and used textiles and more sweeping views across Late Antique society (roughly third to seventh century CE). The exhibition brings together over fifty textiles of diverse materials, techniques, and motifs to explore how clothing and cloth furnishings expressed ideals of self, society, and culture.

Eve M. Kahn, Antiques Columnist, writes about the exhibition and the catalogue in an article in the New York Times:

About 50 fabrics are on view in Designing Identity: The Power of Textiles in Late Antiquity, an exhibition running through May 22 at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in Manhattan. The show’s objects range from a doll’s linen tunic to wall coverings with scenes of feasts and haloed deities, and reunites some weavings that had been separated on the market decades ago.

The catalog, edited by the show’s curator, Thelma K. Thomas, provides details on the textiles’ fibers, dye ingredients and thread counts. But “there are still some technological questions that we haven’t answered yet,” Ms. Thomas said at an exhibition preview.