Category Archives: Museum Collections

Art Institute of Chicago Textile Collection Opening

Tomorrow I am going up to Chicago to attend the re-opening of the Department of Textiles at the Art Institute.  The department has been closed for five years to repair structural problems.  There are two exhibitions featured in the re-opening: June Wayne’s Narrative Tapestries, and Contemporary Fiber Art: A selection from the Permanent Collection.  The latter exhibition includes my Grey Stones weaving, which AIC acquired two years ago.  I am so honored to be included in this happy show, and was delighted to learn that Grey Stones is pictured in the current AIC magazine article about the exhibition.

Art Institute of Chicago publication, 2010

Racine Art Museum and the Orange Show

Last year I had the odd experience of bidding on one of my older tapestries at auction. I let the other guy win. Lately I found that the other guy (gal? don’t know the identity!) has gallantly offered the work to the Racine Art Museum, a longtime supporter of mine (I sell ribbons in their shop, too!). It is still working its way through the accessions process but they told me it is safe to add it to the resume.

The piece is from the 1980’s, from a series about a wonderful folk art environment in Houston (where I lived for several years), called The Orange Show. It is worth a visit.
These tapestries came on the heels of my Italian-villa series that I sent to the Venice Bienale of Architecture in 1985, and were as different from the Tuscan theme as they could be. Sadly, most of the Orange Show pieces died in a fire at Van Straaten Gallery in 1989 in Chicago (the great gallery fire!) but this one made it out alive beforehand and now has made its way north to Racine.

(The tapestry shown here is a detail of “Villa Farsetti: The Greenhouse #1″, which is in a private collection in Houston. Great piece, approx 10″ tall x 110” across. The beginnings of thinking about ribbon as an art form!)

a wonderful year


2008 turned out to be quite a solid year for me as an artist — a surprise that I am profoundly grateful for, given the nature of these times. In the spring, my tapestry “Villa Farsetti: The Greenhouse” was acquired by the Reading Public Museum in Reading, PA; and last month the Art Institute of Chicago purchased my tapestry “Grey Stones”, which hung for many years on my living rom wall as I loved it too much to let go of it. I am delighted it has found a home where it will be cared for in perpetuity!

Other museums which own my work include:
The Archives of the Venice Biennale
The Minneapolis Institute of Art
The Denver Art Museum
Cranbrook Art Museum
The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum

shown: Grey Stones, 1999, wool with cotton