Textiles have long played a central but often overlooked role in art history. Weaving is deeply tied to the discipline: the canvas that dominates traditional art history is itself woven cloth, and weaving has also been used for centuries to create images, patterns and decoration.
Ane Kirstine Preisler Skovgaard, postdoctoral researcher in art history at Aarhus University, focuses this lecture on weaving as a medium, a technique and a form of expression, placing it in an art-historical context. She highlights key moments in the history of woven art and considers the place of woven works in art today. Her PhD thesis, defended in 2022, examined the materiality, capacities and cultural significance of textiles.
