In Thread and On Paper: Anni Albers in Connecticut

March 19–June 14, 2020

This month, the New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) will present an exhibition that focuses on the work Anni Albers produced while living in Connecticut from the 1950s until the time of her death. In 1949, the Alberses left Black Mountain College, settling in New Haven, Connecticut in 1950. This period saw the creation of an extensive body of work by Anni Albers, encompassing textiles, wall hangings, commercial collaborations—such as her designs for Knoll—works on paper, and writings, including her seminal book On Weaving, which was first published in 1965. 
 
Organized by The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, In Thread and On Paper is part of the museum’s 2020/20+ Women @ NBMAA initiative, which focuses this year’s program on seven exhibitions of work by groundbreaking women artists. Anni Albers has received renewed institutional attention in recent years—as Peter Chappell writes in The Guardian, “Albers found success not with titanic installations, but with a medium she had to insist was taken seriously.” In 2017 and 2018, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presented an in-depth survey titled Anni Albers: Touching Vision. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf organized an exhibition of Albers’s work in 2018, which traveled to Tate Modern in London. Last year, Paul Klee and Anni Albers was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.