Lenore Tawney
in ‘Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women’, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington
31 May 2024 – 5 January 2025
Lenore Tawney, Box of Falling Stars, 1984, cotton canvas, linen thread, acrylic paint, and ink, Approx.108 × 68 × 70 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Smithsonian Institution Collections Acquisition Program, 1992.83, © 1984, Lenore G. Tawney
Lenore Tawney is included in ‘Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women’ at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington.
The thirty-three selected artworks piece together an alternative history of American art. Accessible and familiar, fiber handicrafts have long provided a source of inspiration for women. Their ingenuity with cloth, threads, and yarn was dismissed by many art critics as menial labor. The artists in this exhibition took up fiber to complicate this historic marginalization and also revolutionize its import to contemporary art. They drew on personal experiences, particularly their vantage points as women, and intergenerational skills to transform humble threads into resonant and intricate artworks.