Otherworldly fiber art at the Renwick evokes space, sea and flesh
Mark Jenkins, The Washington Post
July 2024
The 33 artworks in the Renwick Gallery’s “Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women” are not quite so rebellious as the show’s title suggests. But they do challenge customary assumptions about textile crafts: Nearly all are defiantly nonfunctional. They’re fiber for art’s sake.
The show is drawn entirely from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, of which the Renwick is a branch. The selection covers nearly a century in U.S. textile art, from the oldest piece, an embroidered bedspread made around 1918 by Marguerite Zorach, up to the most recent entry from 2004. But nearly all the work dates to the second half of the 20th century, and much of it is by women of color. […]