There was one thing I learned today: the Met shopping bag is fuchsia with black Times New Roman words lining the entire bag in different languages – except for one sentence, their English translation, is white. What do those white words say? “One Met. Many Worlds”. This place really made that motto clear to me today.
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the exhibition “Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade” has already celebrated twelve days of display and was swarming with spectators from many nations. No one was standing straight – every one was scrutinizing the hundreds of fabrics while bending down. I swear some of their noses touched the surfaces of the cloths.
Ranging from tapestries to clothing to bedcovers, the exhibition gives the audience an insight as to what everyday life was like in the 1500s to 1800s. But most important of all, the diverse content of every piece of fabric represents the trading and cross-cultural relationships between countries in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. Unlike the other special exhibitions in store at the Met, which often feature a single artist’s work, the textiles in this gallery was a fusion of Southeast Asia, Europe, South America, and Colonial America arts and resources.
What is so special about this exhibit? Yes, the textiles were the combination of different cultures, but how? Let me use one of the works I saw as an example. The Abduction of Helen, which is around 190 inches wide and 140 inches high, was produced in China and sold to the Portuguese market in the early 17th Century. The story depicted, as you probably all know, is the legendary event that sparked the Trojan War. The subject of the tapestry is based on Greek mythology and history, but Chinese motifs were incorporated in the design. In the top border of the drapery, there are two phoenixes facing each other, and on the bottom border, there are two dancing dragons. Both phoenix and dragon are mythical creatures of China. Other than the animals, the waves of water in the top right of the tapestry were designed with Chinese touches. In addition to the Chinese contribution to this work, the Met’s description suggests that the faces of the characters in the textile were painted with a European style, which was most likely done by the Chinese artisans who were taught the painting style in Japan from Jesuit missionaries. The pigments also gave evidence to intercultural exchange, since blue-green pigments found in the drapery were not used in Asia, and the white was common in Japan but not found in Europe. So, the overall evaluation of this piece: A LOT of cultures was involved in manufacturing this single textile including China, Europe, and Japan. There were many other textiles that were even more intercultural than The Abduction of Helen, but what’s so fun about me giving you a written summary? I highly recommend that you go experience it for yourself. It was truly rewarding.
“Interwoven Globe” was not only a massive showcase of aesthetics; rather, it was visually pleasing AND insightful in history and cultural exchange. When I first walked into the gallery, there was a long paragraph on the wall describing the historical background that stimulated international trading in the 1500s (leading to such beautiful fabrics). As I continued on to study each of the installations, I learned that art was not only art back then, it was business as well. In order to increase business opportunities, main textile countries such as India and China would “adapt” to the buyers’ interests, and interests = culture. Therefore, in many of the textiles made in China or India, the design motifs used were not entirely Asian. Instead, European (the big buyers of Asian products) styles were commonly incorporated in the designs. Visually absorbing the amalgamation of ancient cultures is what this exhibition is all about, and it really supports the Met’s slogan. Many worlds in a single artwork.
The strategic placement of works in “Interwoven Globe” was also essential to the experience. The gallery consists of multiple rooms, and each room dedicates art to a different time period or different circumstance under which the art was made. While entering every room, a summary of the works can be found with a title that pretty much sums up the room: “Textile Traditions and Trade in Mexico and Peru”, “Indian Painted and Printed Cottons: Inspiration and Imitation”, “Chinese Silk Exports and Trade Textiles in Japan”…” Every room led to a different culture, but they also led to a later time period of textile trade. Beginning with Silk Road and overseas exchange between Asian countries and European countries of the 1500s, the exhibition ended with Colonial America in the 1800s. Not only was the exhibit a chronological timeline, but it was a gradient of showing the change of textile art as time progressed and different cultural styles became imprinted in Colonial American fabric.
Along with the actual art and their descriptions, Met provided other resources that helped make clear the importance of cultural exchange. There was a projector that showed a map of the world with arrows and lines indicating the trading relationships between countries in different continents. From the diagram, I was able to understand that crossing culture was directly related to trade. This was probably a point the Met wanted to make? Even if the Met did not intend for the exhibition to be both artistic and academic, this was definitely an overpowering experience because it was intellectual and visual at the s
