B
1949
Anni Albers Textiles, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anni Albers Textiles was the first-ever solo presentation of a textile designer at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition featured all aspects of Albers’s work, including hand- and machine-woven samples for drapery, wall coverings, upholstery, and clothing (her “useful materials”), as well as eighteen of her “textile appearance” studies for teaching. Albers introduced two new, more speculative directions for her work: framed weavings intended “in the direction of art” and architectural interventions in the form of five free-­hanging room dividers. Albers’s use of unusual materials, like black cellophane and copper thread, and her experimental space dividers were a hit in newspapers across the country as the exhibition travelled to twenty-six venues over three years. As she said, “It is better that the material speaks than that we speak ourselves.”