Rug and Textile Appreciation Morning: Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart
Virtual and In Person, Saturday, June 14, 2025, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. EDT
Carpet (detail), northwestern Iran, Tabriz, c. 1500. The Textile Museum Collection 1960.9.1. Gift of Joseph V. McMullan in memory of George Hewitt Myers.
As part of a series of 2025 programs that revisit groundbreaking exhibitions of The Textile Museum’s 100-year history, former Textile Museum curator Carol Bier will share her perspective on the significance and impact of The Textile Museum’s 1986 exhibition Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart: Textile Arts of Safavid and Qajar Iran (16th-19th Centuries).
Opening to great public acclaim in Washington, D.C., the exhibition traveled in 1987 to the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. Its six themes explored the social and economic contexts of historical textiles from The Textile Museum’s renowned collection, including an opulent Safavid robe, a massive Tabriz carpet and a rare silk kilim — all currently on view in the museum’s centennial exhibition Intrinsic Beauty: Celebrating the Art of Textiles.
This illustrated lecture will examine the lasting impact of Woven from the Soul, Spun from the Heart and the significance of its accompanying publication, which has been acquired by several hundred museums and university libraries worldwide. It remains a seminal reference for the study of Persian textiles.
This program is presented as part of The Textile Museum’s centennial celebrations in 2025.
About Carol Bier
Carol Bier is a historian of Islamic art who has published widely on cultural aspects of pattern in Islamic art, focusing on intersections of art and mathematics. She was curator for Eastern Hemisphere Collections at The Textile Museum from 1984 to 2001. Today she is a research scholar with the Center for Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and concurrently a research associate at The Textile Museum. She was president of the Textile Society of America and served on its board from 2004 to 2010.
How to Participate
This program will be in a hybrid format. You can join us in person at the museum or watch the livestream online. Please register in advance and choose how you would like to participate. We will email virtual attendees a link and instructions for joining via Zoom. When you register, you can also request to receive a reminder email one day before the program with the link included.
About Rug and Textile Appreciation Mornings
Collectors and experts discuss textile topics and display examples from their personal holdings. This series is named in honor of late Textile Museum trustee emeritus, Harold M. Keshishian. Browse upcoming programs