Contemporary Navajo Weaving: The Gloria F. Ross Collection of the Denver Art Museum.

PositionHeard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona - !Ojo!

SINCE THE 1960S, Navajo weavers have been redefining tradition--calling into question what is contemporary, what is commercial. Now, a new traveling exhibition, Contemporary Navajo Weaving: The Gloria F. Ross Collection of the Denver Art Museum, reflects on the major weaving trends of the last decade.

A unique collaboration of an American art museum, a private individual, an anthropologist, and thirty-three Navajo weavers led to the creation of the collection. During the past fourteen years, New York tapestry maker Gloria F. Ross and Arizona State University anthropologist Ann Lane Hedlund selected textiles for the collection, gathering weavers' life stories and taking photographs of them at their looms as they did so. The emerging theme in Contemporary Navajo Weaving is the individuality of these artists as they combine tradition with innovation.

"Weavers draw ideas from many sources and reinterpret them in their own ways. Their creations are eclectic expressions of Navajo individuality," states Hedlund.

Textiles in the collection range from the bold...

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