The closer we look, the more there is to see. A woven surface that appears simple from a distance can reveal an extraordinary world of texture, color, pattern, and movement when experienced in person.
At MoMA, Woven Histories: Textile and Modern Abstraction, on view from April 20 through September 13, 2025, textiles take center stage in an exhibition that invites us to consider just how expressive and imaginative these materials can be. Woven, knotted, braided, and constructed by hand, the works reveal abstraction through a language that feels both deeply tactile and visually alive.
We are not textile experts, and perhaps that is part of what makes the experience so enjoyable. We move through the galleries simply looking, noticing, and appreciating the remarkable variety of forms and techniques before us. Some works immediately draw us in through bold color or scale, while others reveal their complexity more quietly, asking us to step closer.
The photographs we share offer glimpses of these extraordinary works, but they cannot fully capture their richness. Texture, dimension, and the subtle relationship between material and light are difficult to translate into an image. These are works that seem to ask for time and proximity, where seeing them in person becomes part of understanding their presence.
There is something almost magical about realizing how much can emerge from thread, fiber, and fabric. In the galleries, materials we encounter every day become majestic, intricate, and completely transformed.
Woven Histories leaves us looking at textiles with fresh eyes and perhaps paying a little more attention to the remarkable things that can happen when human hands, imagination, and material come together.
