Intrinsic Beauty: Celebrating the Art of Textiles
As The Textile Museum marks its centennial, Intrinsic Beauty: Celebrating the Art of Textiles offers a journey through two millennia of textile artistry. On view at The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum until June 14, 2025, this exhibition brings together sixty masterworks from the museum’s extensive collection, illuminating the extraordinary craftsmanship, cultural exchange, and enduring legacy of textile traditions worldwide.
Carpet, Türkiye, 17th century. The Textile Museum Collection R.34.34.1. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1927.
Founded in 1925 by George Hewitt Myers, The Textile Museum was built upon an appreciation for textiles as an art form defined by the beauty of design, colour, and technique. Myers assembled a pioneering collection that has since grown to over 25,000 pieces, and this exhibition celebrates his vision.
Visitors will encounter a dazzling array of textiles, some rarely displayed due to their fragility or monumental scale, such as a magnificent twenty-eight-foot Safavid carpet, thought to have once graced a Persian shrine. Other highlights include an exquisite 12th-century Japanese embroidery of the Amida Buddha, a luminous woven curtain fragment from 14th-15th century Spain’s Alhambra Palace, and an extraordinary tie-dyed alpaca tunic from Peru’s Wari culture, crafted between 800-1000 CE.
Tent hanging, India, Golcanda, 1700-1725
Beyond their aesthetic brilliance, these textiles tell intricate stories of social, political, and artistic life across civilisations. Cross-cultural dialogues emerge, revealing the dynamic exchanges that shaped textile traditions over centuries. A 17th-century Spanish Colonial hanging, depicting the Pelican in Her Piety stands as a testament to the global influences in Peru’s artistic heritage, while an ecclesiastical garment from the 16th-17th century showcases sumptuous fabrics from Ottoman Türkiye and Safavid Iran. These connections underscore how textiles have long served as both artistic expressions and markers of cultural identity.
Ecclesiastical garment, Türkiye and Iran, Ottoman empire and Safavid dynasty, 1550-1600
To deepen engagement, the exhibition features commentary from contemporary artists, who reflect on the craftsmanship of these historical works. Their perspectives, placed alongside a chief’s tunic from the Democratic Republic of Congo or a delicate 19th-century piña blouse from the Philippines, provide insight into the enduring relevance of textile traditions. Visitors are encouraged to explore the exhibition through multiple pathways, uncovering stories of innovation, devotion, and technical mastery that define these works.
Piña blouse, 1800-1900. Appliqué; openwork, plain weave, piña fiber, cotton. The Textile Museum Collection.
As The Textile Museum embarks on its next century, Intrinsic Beauty not only honours its remarkable past but also reaffirms its role in preserving, studying, and celebrating textiles as an essential and evolving art form. This exhibition is both a tribute to history and an invitation to discover the limitless artistry of textiles.
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Further Information:
Intrinsic Beauty: Celebrating the Art of Textiles is now on show at The Textile Museum, 701 21st Street, NW Washington, DC 20052
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am - 5pm. Closed on University Holidays.
Admission is Free for all.
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Image Credits:
All images courtesy of the George Washington Textile Museum Collection
Lead Image: Tunic, Peru, 750-950. The Textile Museum Collection 91.341. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1941.