Review: From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles and From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects, edited by Warren Woodfin

Abstract

“From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles,” Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, Flushing, New York (September 13, 2018–January 17, 2019) [http://gtmuseum.org/?page_id=128]. Warren Woodfin, ed., From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles. Selections from the Rose Choron textile collection with related objects . New York: Godwin-Ternbach Museum, Queens College, CUNY, 2018. ISBN: 978-0-9832641-8-7. 93 pages, 92 color and 2 black-and-white illustrations, $40.00. “From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles” celebrates the recent donation of 85 late antique Egyptian textile fragments to the Godwin-Ternbach Museum at Queens College, CUNY.1 Curated by Warren Woodfin (Associate Professor, Art Department, Queens College), Elizabeth Hoy, and Brita Helgesen (Co-Directors of the Godwin-Ternbach), the exhibition and accompanying catalog integrate these newly acquired objects with ancient, late antique, and modern works from the Godwin-Ternbach permanent collection as well as with loans from the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Opera Archives, and several private collectors. In addition, large-scale paintings and fiber works by two contemporary New York artists are interspersed throughout the show. The result is an exciting, dynamic presentation that effectively positions late antique Egyptian textiles in their original social and functional contexts while animating these ancient objects through a rich consideration of their afterlives in the modern and contemporary eras.2 All the late antique textiles on display were woven from linen and wool—not the more luxurious material of silk—and thus they attest to the kinds of everyday fiber objects that dressed the bodies and homes of average people. These commonplace things represent a class of artifact found in institutional collections throughout Europe and North America. Despite their ordinary character, they show an impressive array of vibrantly colored, engaging motifs, from pagan mythological figures (Fig. 1) to patterns of plants and animals (Fig. 2) to busts of women, who might represent personifications of wealth and good fortune or portraits of actual people whose identities have been lost to the passage of time (Fig. 3). A small number of textiles show Christian iconography, including crosses and holy figures (Fig. 4). Together they offer compelling evidence for the visual and material environment of daily life in late antique Egypt. FIG. 1. Black roundel with a riding nereid, Egypt, …