FiberScene - Research, Carolyn Kastner


	Carolyn Kastner
	NAVAJO WEAVER ANNIE KAHN examining 19th Century Navajo blanket Hand-spun wool Photo: Anthony Kahn UNKNOWN NAVAJO WEAVER Ca. 1920 Hand-spun wool Photo: Kerry King YOU ARE THE MOUNTAIN Teresa Archuleta-Sagel Río Grande Tapestry, 1990-91 Vegetal dyed wool, Osage orange, indigo, Marigolds, black walnut hulls, cañaiga, cota	BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Carolyn Kastner is curator of the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco. As curator she has a broad interest in the art of everyday life from cultures around the world. Her research interests are more narrowly focused on the trade in textiles and culture in the American Southwest. Her recent publications include essays on Navajo textiles created and sold in the hybrid culture of reservation trading posts, and the continuity and change in Río Grande textiles. She lectures on the history of museums and collecting, Navajo textiles, and cross-cultural trade in the American Southwest. She received her Ph.D. in Art History with a concentration in American Art from Stanford University. RESEARCH ABSTRACT Every textile carries a narrative created by the weaver. However, the cultural continuity of nineteenth-century Navajo textiles was ruptured when they were collected without provenance. Locked in sotrage far from their cultural origins, the textiles were rendered mute. Though we can never recover the weaver's intention, cultural interpreters can read the technique, materials, and style in each textile as a weaver's mark. Gathering contemporary Navajo weavers around nineteenth-century textiles has Reinvigorated the stories and the textiles. My greatest professional pleasure has been working on projects that bring weavers and historic textiles together. RELEVANCE TO THE FIBER FIELD In the increasingly hybrid culture of the United States, it is important for artists, collectors and researchers to work together to set new exhibition and interpretation standards during the twenty-first century.

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