Since the 1960s, Marilou Schultz Has Merged Diné Weaving and Digital Worlds
A first retrospective of Diné weaver Marilou Schultz opens this week at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in upstate New York, curated by Candice Hopkins and featuring about 55 works with archival materials. Schultz, who began weaving at age five in Leupp on the Navajo Nation, has explored connections between weaving and computing since the 1960s, including a sustained focus over the last 30 years on computer-chip imagery. The exhibition also includes works by four generations of weavers in Schultz’s family, including her mother, Martha Gorman Schultz, who died last year at age 93; it shows her final weaving, a Germantown-style rug made with wool gifted by acclaimed weaver Melissa Cody. The show highlights Schultz’s mix of traditional Diné techniques and formal experimentation, including an Untitled work from the late 1990s that reconfigures a third-phase Navajo wearing blanket design (1860–68) into a triptych.
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This story was covered in Auction Fever, Digital Backlash, and Stolen Masterpieces