Continuing Traditions

GAIL MARTIN GALLERY
310 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10025
212-864-3550

Doors open at 6:00pm
Dinner will be at 8:00pm at a local restaurant.

There will be a charge for dinner, TBD.
Reservations for the event and/or dinner should be made in advance using the club’s members page.

To illustrate the concept of “Continuing Traditions,” the Gail Martin Gallery will be showing us ancient, antique and ethnographic textile art along with the work of two contemporary artists, Polly Barton and James Bassler. In addition, traditional African ceramics will be displayed along with the works of contemporary ceramic artist, Jeff Shapiro.

Gail Martin has been a dealer specializing in ancient, antique and ethnographic textiles for 42 years. In 1972, following travels in Afghanistan and Turkey, she established the first gallery in the United States devoted to presenting rare and artistically significant textiles. She was one of the driving forces that established such textiles as fine art. Most major museums and private collections of Pre-Columbian and Asiatic textiles are indebted to her findings.

She is curator of the Guido Goldman Collection of Central Asian Ikats since its inception in 1975. From 1997 to 2000 she was the curatorial consultant to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Jewish Museum and the Denver Art Museum for their presentation of the exhibition, IKAT: Splendid Silks of Central Asia

She curated the collection of Central Asian nomadic embroidery for Jack and Aviva Robinson. This collection is the subject of a book Uzbek Embroidery in the Nomadic Tradition, written by Kate Fitz Gibbon and Andrew Hale and published by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The collection was exhibited at the museum in 2007.

She served as an advisor to the International Conference of Oriental Carpets for the exhibition of textiles and carpets brought by the conference from Uzbek museums and exhibited at the Uzbek Embassy in Washington, D.C. during the time of the conference.

Gail is also a long time member of the Hajji Baba Club.