The eagerly awaited exhibition of the carpet collection of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts opened on June 3. Twenty-two carpets and related textiles from the Museum's collection are on exhibit in the Educational and Cultural Carrefour of the Desmarais Pavilion through July 31.
Dr. Annette Ittig was the guest curator and author of the catalogue, Woven Dreams: Oriental Carpets from the Collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Fifty-seven carpets in the Museum's collection are documented in the bilingual catalog.
| Caucasian, late 19th century. Wool pile with a wool foundation. 1,150 knots/dm2, 208x148 cm (6'10"x4'10") |
The exhibition was enhanced by a display of weaving tools, photographs, and didactic panels. These panels provide background information explaining the principles of weaving, differences in weaving techniques, differences and definition of design, as well as a brief history of collecting in Montreal. Other panels describe the functional, decorative, and ritualistic uses of Oriental carpets and textiles. Photographs by Harold Bedoukian illustrate the different environments in which the carpets are woven, how they are woven, as well as portraying them in use. Photographs from the Notman Archives of the McCord Museum document the 1916 Carpet Exhibition as well as depict the use of Oriental rugs in the home of one of Montreal's early collectors, Sir William Van Horne.
The carpets are placed within ample space to view and study each of the pieces. Details of the backs of selected carpets are enlarged to show the weave pattern. Specific attribution of many carpets is lacking; instead, the broader classification, i.e. Persian or Caucasian, is given. The exhibition is composed primarily of 19th and early 20th century village and tribal carpets. The only classical carpet is an 18th century Animal and Tree fragment, which was chosen to don the cover of the catalogue.
In keeping with the focus of the exhibition, a Turkoman juval and a Caucasian horse cover represent functional uses. Pileless weaving techniques are illustrated by a mixed technique flatweave rug, the jajim fragment, and the Senna kilim. Turkish rugs make up the largest contingent of rugs in the exhibition. With the exception of the Kula mazarlik, all the Turkish carpets contain a prayer design.
The large 19th century Senna carpet represents a more sophisticated form of manufacture than most of the rugs in the exhibit. It seems that this rug appears in the Notman photograph, circa 1920, of the Van Horne living room. The carpet was donated to the Museum by Miss Adaline Van Horne in 1944.
The Decorative Arts Section of the Museum was founded in 1916 by Cleveland Morgan. The majority of pieces which comprise this collection were given by private and corporate collectors. In 1916 the first carpet exhibition in Montreal was held at the Art Association of Montreal (later the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) to develop connoisseurship and provide models for artists and craftsmen. This exhibition was not only the first of its type in Montreal but one of the earliest in North America.
Three carpets exhibited in 1916 are part of the current exhibition. A 19th century southern or southeastern Iranian carpet, labeled as Shiraz in the early exhibit, has many attributes of Afshar weaving, although specific attribution is lacking. This rug is striking in its design with repeated boteh on a blue ground and a main border composed of cartouches on an ivory ground. A late 19th century Qashqa'i rug, also labeled Shiraz in 1916, has a design composed of alternating red and ivory stripes, each of which contain a running vine motif. The main border is composed of interconnecting octagonal motifs on an ivory ground. The third carpet is Caucasian, classified as Daghestan in 1916; however, structurally it bears more resemblance to rugs of the Kuba weaving district.
The exhibition provides an overview of weaving techniques, methods used in weaving, a brief history of the Museum's collection, as well as a feast for our eyes. Woven Dreams leaves us dreaming for more.
After closing at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Woven Dreams will circulate in Montreal area museums and cultural centers in 1995:
Maison de la Culture Mercier, Montreal, January 21 - February 26
Musée d'art de Saint Laurent, Ville St. Laurent, Mary 11 - April 9
Centre Culturel de Pierrefonds, Pierrfonds, April 18 - May 16
Maison de la culture Notre Dame de Grace, Notre Dame de Grace, July 5 - August 22
Centre culturel de Dorval, Dorval, August 31 - October 1.
 | Southern/southeastern Iran, 19th century. Wool pile with wool foundation. 1,050 knots/dm2, 160x106cm (5'3"x3'6") |
Exhibitions, unlike theatrical and musical performances, are not works of art but the presentation of works. As such, they may be judged in light of the presenters' intentions, intentions that are clear enough in the Roy Lichtenstein and Tamara de Lempicka shows hanging concurrently in the museum's other galleries: to excite, to titillate, to amuse, to impress. The museum's austere classical and modernist faces on either side of Sherbrooke Street are made brazen with their painted banners.
Not so "Woven Dreams," demurely sheltered under elegant signage in the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion. Here the hope is transparently to educate, not to exploit, to create an informed interest, not feed on one already formed. It would be difficult to quarrel with such ambitions in Montreal, where informed interest in the carpet tradition has been, ahem, lacking. How well then have the organizers succeeded?
The new Desmarais Pavilion is a lofty and attractive space. It's impossible for a rug person to pass into the "Woven Dreams" rooms without a little rush of pleasure and gratitude that someone in authority, someone outside the long-standing Montreal Oriental Rug Society, has finally undertaken an exhibition of old rugs. Ironically, one of the continent's first was staged by this very institution, although the date was 1916 and the approach, as we shall see, very different in one important respect.
Some 20 carpets, most small Turkish and Persian rural pieces, are carefully hung, interspersed here and there with discursive panels of an informal, pedagogical nature ("Have you noticed that some carpets are finer than others?" is the amiable tone of the headings, although the verbiage that follows is dry as old bones). Relatively few visitors interrupt one's meditations. Classical music wafts from a nearby gallery. Here is an astonishingly good, early 19th century, western Turkish prayer rug in muted yellows and mahogany red. Here is a century-old Caspian coast Caucasian, traditional blue field surrounded by an almost alarming border: sinuous, opulent, European. Here is a touchingly pretty Afshar. Here several excellent Sennehs including one some 15 feet in length. Many of the rest could pass without notice but the over-all effect is agreeable, though the voice, in so saying, may have trailed off a little.
It wasn't until a second visit that I identified my uneasiness from the opening night: the carpets are unlit. The rooms are lit, of course, and the large didactic cards are brilliant under halogen spots hung on high, but the stars of the show languish in the gloom. Of course, this can be no accident; the museum staff is professional and the equipment is available. In response to a query from a Rug Society member, it was explained that the weavings, most of which had lain in storage since 1916, had to be protected from light. How could such an unfortunate opinion, leaving a roomful of carpets thirsting for light, have gone uncorrected? Who was advising?
The catalogue, with text by guest curator Annette Ittig, brought in for this purpose, is a handsome little production showing 15 rugs in color and the balance of the collection in black-and-white. The text is workmanlike, if uninspired, strong on academic cross-referencing (the author's bibliography cites 10 of her own works and one each from other luminaries in the field) and is accompanied by the standard technical analyses. It does, however, confirm the weaknesses of the exhibition captions. Question marks are used liberally to suggest scholarly concern as to place of origin, but go too far when they question the Turkish origin of two old (Turkish) prayer rugs. Likewise, the author misdates, and thus diminishes, the same two rugs, assuming all pale, purple-dyed yarn to be aniline-dyed (it is not, and the effect is quite dramatic when it is). Like the use of "between you and I," these are the well-meaning errors of someone striving to avoid error.
It has to be said that the project's dual character contains a disabling contradiction: a cataloguing exercise for the sake of academic completeness must work against a public show if there simply are not enough first-rate carpets in the collection. To be sure, some of the choices made from those available are puzzling: an undistinguished Tekke mat is displayed while an apparently handsome Ersari main carpet, illustrated in color, is not; a dreary Bandirma (Panderma) is given pride of place; an apparently interesting mid-century Bergama is left in the drawer. But such quibbles aside, and with the initial decision confining the show to the museum's collection, the standard of materials was a given.
Montreal is a city crying out for an increased awareness of and access to traditional carpets, one of humanity's more notable achievements -- a utilitarian craft that evolved to a high form of artistic expression. In this respect, Montreal may differ from some other cities of its age and distinction, but it has much in common with many more. What can we learn from "Woven Dreams"?
Inclusiveness, first of all. During the last quarter century, the proliferation of enthusiasm and knowledge for this subject among the laity has run ahead of institutional response. Few educational or curatorial bodies wishing to tap into this growing field of learning can afford to exclude the journals, conferences and informal organizations that have nurtured it. Unlike other areas of art history, Islamic art, say, or Renaissance painting, there is a paucity of formal academics, and their involvement is no guarantee of the best work. The simple truth is that most scholars studying Oriental weavings do something else for a living.
Museums, especially those, like Montreal's, that have no department devoted to weavings, cannot be expected to know this -- how could they? If those involved in the love of antique carpets fail to convey to their local museums or galleries a sense of the community of interest that surrounds this subject, others will fill the vacuum. Acknowledgements for the funding of the present catalogue, as a case in point, include a list consisting largely of dealers in new carpets. Where are Canada's carpet societies and dealers in antique rugs? Clearly, not making themselves known.
Most importantly, few provincial museums have collections large enough or good enough to provide more than a few pieces to any quality exhibition. Unlike Old Master paintings, however, a great repository of important rugs is now in private hands, with owners willing and enthusiastic to lend. Important exhibitions around the world make this clear several times a year. What museum curators, if they only knew, would not be delighted to benefit from such largess? Ironically, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' own 1916 exhibition was of this sort, showing carpets "drawn from the collections of private and corporate owners." The present institution's considerable reputation would act as the perfect catalyst to gather together truly marvelous examples drawn from Canadian, even Montreal, collections. The creative use of local expertise and resources could all but eliminate costs.
Many Montrealers are as proud of their museums as citizens of other North American cities. The current show has allowed some who would never have conceived of carpets as art (as opposed to dealers' "masterpieces") to glimpse that very large world. If it has only succeeded in scratching the surface, this is not to be regretted. A community of enthusiasm is there to be tapped and other, more substantial achievements to be had without waiting another 80 years.
