Textile Arts Council
In support of the Textile Department
of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Upcoming Events
Lectures, Tours and Workshops
Lecture
Saturday, May 16th from 10:00 am
to
11:30 am PDT
Indigo Journeys:
from Ancient Arabia
to
Modern Manhattan
​
with
Jenny Balfour Paul
On Zoom Only
Lecture
Saturday, June 20th
from 10:00 am
to
11:30 am PDT
Silk and Silver Threads:
Brilliance and Sheen in Andean Textile Traditions
​
with
Elena Phipps
De Young Museum
Koret Hall
and
Zoom
Tour
Sashiko and Boro Textiles Up Close
Join TAC for a rare opportunity to learn about and examine antique and vintage
Japanese textiles from Dr. Cathy Cerny’s personal collection.
Saturday, June 27th 2026
2 pm – 3 pm
The Menlo Park address will be provided prior to the tour.
This is an in-person event
$35 members, $40 non members
​
Due to overwhelming demand, a second tour has been added on the same day at 11 am - 12 pm.
​
Please click on the link below to find out more.
Tour
Barbara Shapiro, tour leader
Jeremy Frey, artist
(will not be present on the tour)
Point Basket, Jeremy Frey, 2011
Jeremy Frey: Woven, a guided tour by Barbara Shapiro
​Join internationally known fiber artist and basket weaver Barbara Shapiro for a personal tour of this exhibit.
​
​
Saturday July 11, 2026 12:30-1:30
​
$30 members, $40 non members
​​​​
The tour will take place at Stanford University
​
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University
328 Lomita Drive
Stanford, CA 94305
​
Please see the link below for more information and registration.
Jeremy Frey: Woven traces the artist’s development from the early 2000s to the present day, demonstrating the extent to which he continues to expand the possibilities of this woven art form.
​
More than 30 baskets come together in a single gallery to showcase Frey’s vibrant color palette, distinctive patterns, and tremendous technical skill and ingenuity. Braiding natural growth cycles with his own ancestral history, Frey continues to add new letters to an ancient language, helping to ensure its future.
​
The Cantor is honored to be the final—and only west coast—venue for this acclaimed exhibition organized by the Portland Museum of Art in Maine. Seventh-generation basket weaver Jeremy Frey (b. 1978) often remarks that the exhibition was “thousands of years in the making.”
​
Barbara Shapiro is an internationally known fiber artist and basket weaver. Barbara has produced textile art for many years. She combines rich knowledge of historic and ethnic textiles with broad technical experience in weaving, dyeing and basketry. Indigo has colored her materials through the decades. For much of the past 22 years, her art practice has been devoted to coiled and plaited basketry.
Upcoming Lectures, Tours and Workshops
Watch This Space!
Highlights From 2025
The images above are from our most popular event of the year - the Annual Textile Bazaar.
​
Enjoy the photos and be sure to join us for next year's bazaar -
early November, 2026
TAC in 2025
Bay Area Fiber Artists Archive
Bay Area Fiber Artists Archive
In 2021, TAC launched its Virtual Program Series dedicated to highlighting the lives and work of living Bay Area fiber artists through video documentaries and artists’ conversations.
​
The first program focuses on Alice Beasley, an Oakland-based African American figurative quilter. It took place on August 15, 2021, premiering a video of Alice sharing her work process at her home and studio. In this project, TAC collaborated with the Tracing Patterns Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Berkeley, dedicated to the advancement of textile arts.
​
Our second program features Kay Sekimachi, an internationally renowned weaver who mentored many other Bay Area artists.
​
The third program highlights San Francisco Bay Area mixed media artists Jean Cacicedo and Janet Lipkin who helped pioneer "Art to Wear," an art form designed around the body. Working with a series of studio visits, conversations with these artists, and perspectives from author and curator Melissa Leventon, this film is a tribute to the contributions, friendship, and influence of these two artists.
​
In the fourth program, discover the arashi shibori based art of Ana Lisa Hedstrom and Judith Content. Using a 19th century process intended for commercial production of modest fabric for yukata robes, they have adapted the technique to make innovative and inspired works of art. Interviews with the artists, demonstrations of their techniques and commentary by artist and scholar Yoshiko Wada introduce the viewer to their artistic legacy.
Alice Beasley: Having Her Say
Living Art: Jean Cacicedo, Janet Lipkin
& The Evolution of Art to Wear
Kay Sekimachi Perspectives: Art, Legacy and Influence
Ana Lisa Hedstrom and Judith Content: Continuum In Cloth / Approaches to Contemporary Shibori
Updates From the Museum
Now on View at the Legion of Honor
Featuring the Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis, or the "Linen Book of Zagreb" pictured above.
On view through September 20th, 2026
Members of FAMSF receive free admission to this special exhibition.
"Drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries and cutting-edge scholarship, this is the most comprehensive exhibition on Etruscan culture in the United States to date. Over 150 exquisitely crafted and well-preserved examples of bronze and terracotta sculpture, gold jewelry, ceramics, and architectural features, as well as the longest-surviving piece of Etruscan writing, reveal a legacy that continues to captivate today.
The longest text we have, the Liber linteus zagrabiensis, is a linen manuscript from the 3rd century BC. It lists ritual sacrifices and prayers, arranged in a calendar format. It was later cut into strips and used to wrap an Egyptian mummy. Rediscovered in the 19th century, it is Europe’s oldest surviving book."
Opens at the de Young Saturday, June 27th
"The Gathering brings together paintings that imagine new worlds shaped by beauty, community, and resilience amid social challenges. Omuku’s paintings unfold in lush, otherworldly landscapes—celestial skies, flowering fields, and botanical bounty. This botanical sensibility is deeply personal, shaped by her mother’s horticultural work and her own experience as a florist, and it animates the imaginative worlds she creates. Omuku’s figures gather in fields, beneath trees, and along the water’s edge—places where nature becomes a witness to human experience. Drawing on the language of botanical illustration, she treats nature as a gathering place for healing, kinship, and renewal. Working on handwoven sanyan cloth, a historic Yoruba textile once made of silk and cotton, Omuku revives a material tradition tied to memory, ceremony, and cultural knowledge."
Egungun masquerade, last exhibited in 2005, will be shown alongside Omuku’s work. The exhibit will also showcase two extraordinary kente wrappers, on display for the first time.
Highlights of the opening day program include:
• Artist Talk with Nengi Omuku
• Audio tour by Bloomberg Connects
• A new film documenting the artist and her practice
• Free admission all day
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Embroidered hanging or cover (suzani) (detail), late 19th century. Cotton plain weave with silk embroidery, 98 x 75 in. (248.92 x 190.5 cm).
The Caroline and H. McCoy Jones Collection.
Bequest of H. McCoy Jones, 1988.11.468.
Photograph by Randy Dodson
