Coiling Culture: Basketry Art of Native North America

Exhibition Website

Sep 10 2016 - Feb 18 2018

Baskets were one of the first art forms in the Americas, with basket fragments found in California and the Southwest dating to 9,400 years ago. Over the millennia, native North Americans developed elaborate techniques and intricate designs worked in local materials, from sweetgrass in Florida to black ash in the Northeast and deer grass in California, among many others. These materials were sacred to their makers and those who used these special containers. So too was the way each was made with coiling, especially poignant, symbolizing for many groups the path of human emergence from inside earth and the movement of the spirits between realms. This exhibition explores the intersection between material, making, and meaning in the fragile basketry art of the Southeast to the Southwest and up into the Arctic. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Fiber Arts
  • Indigenous
  • Design
  • Textiles / Basketry / Quilts
  • Americas
  • Various artists

Exhibition Venues & Dates