HALI NEWSLETTER No. 449

[View this email in your browser]( The Met has launched an initiative encompassing exhibitions, partnerships, curatorial residencies and programmes designed to spotlight the importance of African art, both in its collections and in a global arthistory context. Named ‘Africa in Focus’, it looks ahead to the reopening of the New York museum’s galleries for African art, scheduled for spring 2025, as part of the re-envisioning of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Its recently opened ‘Africa & Byzantium’ spotlights the art of medieval North Africa, Nubia, Ethiopia and Egypt, to which this 5th-century fragment of a hanging is attributed. Held in association with [Martin Randall Travel]( this HALI Tour takes place from 8–20 April 2024, offering expert guidance and exclusive access to some of the most beautiful and important art, carpets, textiles and architecture in Spain and Portugal. Attendees will be guided around Lisbon, Madrid, Pastrana, Cuenca, Zamora, Palencia, Burgos, Santo Domingo de Silos, Covarrubias, Segovia, Segovia, La Granja and El Escorial. Offered by [The Black Tent Project]( and HALI, this tour is being held from 24 May–5 June 2024. Participants will be taken on a journey through weaving regions in Turkey, encountering an eclectic array of rugs and textiles in Istanbul, Bursa, Bergama, Ä°zmir, Tire-Birgi, Ankara, Cappadocia, Sultanhanı and Konya just ahead of the ICOC XV in Istanbul. There are many branches to the rug world and ‘Following the Thread’ unites them all. Presented by Hali Publications Limited, this new podcast offers a wealth of information about both antique and modern woven art, and is structured in a way that reflects our quarterly magazines, HALI and COVER. The first episode is split into three sections, beginning with a focus on [COVER Connect Las Vegas]( featuring interviews by Rachel Meek with some of our exhibitors. Lucy Upward then discusses rug highlights at recent European fairs, which is accompanied by an [article on the COVER website](. Finally, Ben Evans discusses the most recent issue of [HALI]( and speaks to Victoria Finlay about her new book Fabric. [Listen on SoundCloud.]( [Listen on Spotify.]( With the 8th edition of Morocco's National Handicrafts Week drawing closer, starting from 28 February, the focus of this month's [#RugFactFriday]( is on Moroccan pile rugs. Parallels between the artwork of classic modernism and the visual world of Moroccan tribal carpets have been the subject of ongoing discussion in the past few years, a connection which has been the focus of two articles by Gebhart Blazek in past issues of HALI. In HALI 178, prompted by an exhibition of Professor Jürgen Adam's collection of Moroccan carpets, Blazek explores the idea that these carpets 'invite questions about the boundaries between fine art and design – either as the conscious shaping of everyday objects, or as the product of an intuitively configured ‘anti-design’, with no claim to artistic ambition in a Western sense'. While in HALI 199, Blazek recounts a conversation that he had with Professor Jürgen Adam on the 'search for the ‘missing link’, or the evidence for a direct relationship between the work of Western artists and the seemingly modern imagery of rural Moroccan carpets.' He writes: 'At first glance, this relationship appears to be obvious, particularly because visual artists, architects, writers and musicians regularly visited the Maghreb throughout the 20th century to study there, think of Paul Klee, August Macke or Le Corbusier...But the further you delve into the material, the clearer it becomes that you cannot really discern any relationship just at the visual surface level. It is far more likely that such a link would be born out of the atmospheric conditions or higher order structures.' For Adam, 'his previously intensive search for a direct, formal relationship has turned into open amazement at how artistic processes that come from entirely different individual viewpoints and that work with entirely different media, methods and speeds can often lead to astonishingly similar solutions.' We invite those interested in the relationship between the two artistic mediums to use the goldmine of articles in the HALI Archive to form their own opinions. Image: Rug (detail), north of Boujad, western foothills of Middle Atlas, 1960s-70s, 1.65 x 2.70 m (5'5" x 8'9"). Gebhart Blazek Collection. [Buy a digital subscription to HALI.]( [Facebook]( [Instagram]( [Website]( Copyright © 2023 Hali Publications, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: HALI Publications 6 Sylvester Path London, Hackney E8 1EN United Kingdom Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](. This email was sent to {EMAIL} [why did I get this?]( [unsubscribe from this list]( [update subscription preferences]( Hali Publications Ltd · 6 Sylvester Path · London, England E8 1EN · United Kingdom