Behind the Numbers: Winter 2013

Picking up the Threads
Hicks has been instrumental in the development and recognition of contemporary fiber-based art as a valid medium within the realm of “fine art.” Early champions like curator Mildred Constantine at the Museum of Modern Art and architect Warren Platner helped introduce Hicks’s work to a larger, international audience. Hicks, among contemporaries like Magdalena Abramowitz and Lenore Tawney, factored into discussions on feminism and art during the 1960s and 1970s and inspired a new generation of fiber artists and craftspeople. An upsurge in cultural interest in textiles, patterns, and the handmade is evidenced from the runways of Fashion Week to the success of twenty-first-century makers’ markets like Etsy. Loughrey observes that “recent museum shows have probably also contributed a great deal to the current market appreciation,” referring to the major retrospective Sheila Hicks: 50 Years, which traveled to U.S. venues in 2011 and 2012, and Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, organized by the Bard Graduate Center in 2006, which took as its subject her smaller sketch weavings—as well as a 2011 exhibition in Prague.