Weaving stories: art and textiles
Weekend art history course
17 June 2023 10am - 5pm18 June 2023 10am - 5pm
Wolfson British Academy Room | Burlington Gardens
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers
Join us for this weekend course on art and textiles. We cross continents and timeframes as we unpick the history of fabrics and explore the world of cutting-edge contemporary textile art.
Please note: this is an in-person event only
Textiles are one of the most ancient art forms, with the first fabrics being created over 34,000 years ago. Historically, they were also one of the most important, being used for a myriad of reasons: from the practical to the sacred. Great swathes of textiles are found in burial tombs the world over. Throughout history, fabrics have held a unique place as a vehicle for storytelling. Communication across cultures can be traced through trade: the sharing of fabrics and the dissemination of techniques. The study of textiles is the study of conversations – across cultures and across timeframes.
In this ambitious course, a line-up of expert curators and writers weave together the various threads, beginning to embroider key themes and ideas.
The course considers the distinctions between art and craft and what role textiles, fabric and fashion have on the democratisation of art. Recent scholarship has celebrated, rather than undermined, the historically ‘female’ and ‘domestic’ element of textiles – often one of the few making practices assigned to women throughout history. The course addresses the crucial role of textiles in some of Western art’s most famous art movements: from the Renaissance to Modernism; and highlights the importance and significance of fabric art across the globe.
Participants also learn about the exciting world of textile art today, which both celebrates and challenges textile art of the past. We consider some of the world’s leading artists who use fabrics in their works: Sheila Hicks, Cecilia Vicuña, Grayson Perry RA and Yinka Shonibare RA. Textile art today provides a unique opportunity to explore ideas of gender, race and identity; the handmade vs the machine; and the state of the world’s environment.
This weekend course is inspired by the work of the Gee’s Bend quilters such as Mary Lee Bendolph and Martha Jane Pettway, featured in the RA’s exhibition, Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers: Black Artists from the American South. The course also takes place the first weekend of the RA’s Summer Exhibition – so as well as the Gee’s Bend quilts, participants also have the opportunity to see what textile art looks like today.
To create your own quilts inspired by Gee's Bend, sign up for the weekend course Gee’s Bend and Beyond: Improvisational Quiltmaking.
Minimum age 18. If you have any accessibility needs, please contact academic.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk.
£420. Includes light refreshments and a wine reception at the end of day one.
Friends of the RA book first
Souls Grown Deep like the Rivers
About the speakers
Mary Schoeser is a freelance writer and curator, who has contributed to the dialogue surrounding contemporary textile arts practice. She has authored essays on leading UK artists such as Kaffe Fassett, Diana Harrison, Julia Griffiths Jones, Alice Kettle, Hillu Liebelt, Deirdre Nelson, Deepa Panchamia, Norma Starszakowna and Michael Brennand Wood. With co-curator Dennis Nothdruft she has developed an exhibition on Orla Kiely for the Fashion & Textile Museum (May 2018) and Tricia Guild (February 2019). With Dilys Blum at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she produced the exhibition and book, Off the Wall: American Art to Wear (Nov. 2019). In this – as well as in books such as Silk (Yale University Press, 2007), Rozanne Hawksley: Offerings (Ruthin Craft Centre and Lund Humphries, 2009) and Textiles: The art of mankind (Thames & Hudson, 2012 and 2013) – she draws upon her work as an historian to inform an understanding of leading-edge developments. She is affiliated with the Victoria and Albert Museum as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow, and is Patron of the School of Textiles, Coggeshall, and the Bernat Klein Foundation, for which she edited their recently-published book, Bernat Klein.
Professor Evelyn Welch is Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Bristol. She graduated from Harvard University, receiving her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London. She was previously Senior Vice-President for Service, People & Planning at King’s College London, and had been Vice-President (Arts and Sciences) and Provost (Arts and Sciences). As Professor of Renaissance Studies, she has led major research programmes including The Material Renaissance, and Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images. She recently completed a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award for a project on Renaissance Skin and has authored numerous books, including Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800 (OUP 2017), and Shopping in the Renaissance (Yale 2005), winning the Wolfson Prize for History.
Professor Sussan Babaie teaches at The Courtauld, University of London. She has curated exhibitions on Persian and Islamic arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Harvard, Smith College, and Michigan university museums, and at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. She is the author of Isfahan and Its Palaces, co-author of Persian Kingship and Architecture, Shirin Neshat, Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art, and Geometry and Art in the Modern Middle East.
Dr Christine Checinska is the V&A’s inaugural Senior Curator of African and African Diaspora Fashion and Lead Curator of the Africa Fashion exhibition, 2nd July 2022 – 16th April 2023. Prior to joining the V&A, Christine worked as a womenswear designer, academic, artist and curator. Her creative practice and research explore the relationship between fashion, culture and race. Christine’s recent exhibitions include an intervention for Makers Eye: Stories of Craft at the Crafts Council Gallery and Folded Life at Johanne Jacobs Museum, Zurich, Switzerland. Her recent publications include ‘Re-Fashioning African Diasporic Masculinities’ in Fashion and Postcolonial Critique (2019). In 2016 she delivered the TedxTalk Disobedient Dress: Fashion as Everyday Activism. In industry for over thirty years, Christine has created womenswear collections for iconic British brands such as Margaret Howell, where she was a Senior Designer, during the late 1990s.
Dr Flavia Frigeri is an art historian, lecturer, and ‘Chanel Curator for the Collection’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Previously she was ‘Curator, International Art’ at Tate Modern, where she co-curated The World Goes Pop (2015) and was responsible for Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs (2014), Paul Klee: Making Visible (2013) and Ruins in Reverse (2013). She is the author of Pop Art and Women Artists both in Thames & Hudson’s Art Essentials series and the co-editor of a volume of collected essays, New Histories of Art in the Global Postwar Era: Multiple Modernisms (Routledge, 2021).
Raina Lampkins-Fielder is a curator for the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. She has worked for over 20 years in museums and cultural institutions as a curator and cultural programmer, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Mona Bismarck American Center in Paris, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Ferren Gipson is a British-American art historian, writer, and artist. Her words can be found across mediums, including her books The Ultimate Art Museum and Women’s Work; articles in the Financial Times and WeTransfer’s online magazine WePresent; and the visual arts podcast Art Matters. She is a strong advocate for broadening the audience for art historical content, and topics in her research include explorations of the intersections between art and popular culture, highlighting the work of marginalised artists, and researching political themes in modern Chinese art. She has also delivered talks and hosted interviews for brands and institutions, including Tate, Esquire Magazine, National Gallery, The Design Museum and more. Within her textile art practice, she explores themes of labour, matrilineal connections, materiality, and colour. She is currently a doctoral researcher at SOAS, University of London.
Our courses and classes programme
Our varied programme of short courses and classes provides an opportunity to explore subjects ranging from life drawing to the history of exhibitions and arts management, led by expert tutors and practising artists. These courses introduce traditional art-making processes, as well as perspectives on art history, theory and business.
Give this course as a gift
All of our courses can be purchased as a gift for a friend or family member – giving the gift of education and a remarkable experience. To arrange a personalised Gift Voucher, please contact the Academic Programmes Team, by calling 020 7300 5641 or email academic.programmes@royalacademy.org.uk
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