I am taking a holiday from posting a new sketch tonight because ... the exhibition catalog has arrived! It is thick and heavy and full of gorgeous color pictures (including some angles on objects that weren't available in the display I saw. Unfortunately, what it doesn't have is a level of commentary on the clothing and textiles that fills me with confidence in the knowledge and expertise of the writer(s). Random examples: A fabric with a woven-in design is described as "embroidered". An embroidery that is unmistakably done in silk is described as "woolen". A textile described as "greenish yellow" that was, in fact, a pale indigotin blue. What makes this all the more disappointing is that Elizabeth Barber was a primary author for the catalog and contributed an essay on the textiles. I haven't had a chance to read the essay itself yet and I can only hope that she is not in any way responsible for the flawed catalog descriptions.
Overall, while the catalog presents an extensive and detailed historic and archaeological context for the exhibit, the descriptions of the display items themselves are fairly superficial and lacking in technical detail and occasionally have an oddly and awkwardly propagandizing tone. (Or maybe not so oddly, given some of the political issues around these artifacts and the cultures that produced some of them.) For example, the description of a pair of extremely plain and simple woolen trousers concludes with, "The nature of these trousers comes from their own specific cultural background. They present a rich style of dress, elegant and colorful. For the study of clothing of this period and region, they have a great deal of value." Um ... "rich ... elegant and colorful"????? A plain tabby-weave natural-colored wool textile used for the simplest possible cut of trousers? In a context where we're also looking at richly polychrome silk brocades? It just ... does not compute. Ah well. At least the pictures will be useful in supplementing my notes.
