textiles. During the 1950s and 1960s, hand weaving was without the constraints of the loom. In a way, they put into included in the curriculum of many art schools and uni- practice many of Albers’s visionary ideas for the medium. 25 versities across the Americas. Scholar and curator Elissa It was serendipitous, then, that Josef Albers was teach- Auther has argued that, while Albers was in昀氀uential to the ing at Yale University when Sheila Hicks enrolled there to development of U.S.–based artists working in 昀椀ber a gen- study painting in 1954. She was 昀椀rst introduced to Andean eration or two after her, the role ancient and indigenous textiles in an undergraduate course with Professor George textile cultures, including the Andean, played in their work Kubler, a leading scholar of ancient art of the Americas. cannot be credited only to Albers and the Bauhaus leg- Fascinated by them, she started to learn to weave and acy. “When Albers resettled in the United States,” Auther went on to write her undergraduate thesis on this subject explains, “she encountered a country already caught up in under the advisement of Junius Bird, an archaeologist and a revival of interest in the ancient art of the Americas fos- curator at the American Museum of Natural History and an 28 tered by a range of federal, cultural and corporate programs expert on Peruvian textiles (昀椀g. 35). In 1954 Josef intro- 26 and initiatives undertaken between the U.S. and Mexico.” duced Hicks to Anni so they could discuss their shared Among these initiatives were the American Museum of interests. As Hicks recalls, Anni advised her to keep her Natural History’s design reform program, initiated in 1915, weavings reticular as she started her own journey into the 29 which made the museum’s textile collections available to world of interwoven threads. It was Josef who encour- designers with the aim of deriving a national style from aged her to travel to Chile to replace him on a teaching indigenous designs of the Americas, and the 1933 Museum invitation, and with the support of a Fulbright grant, Hicks 30 of Modern Art exhibition American Sources of Modern Art embarked on a two-year trip to South America in 1957. (Aztec, Mayan, Incan), which paired modern and ancient She began her series of small weavings called 27 objects. The 昀椀ber arts movement exploded in the 1960s, Minimes, such as Rallo (1957; 昀椀g. 36), during this trip. These with textile artists experimenting with structures, uncon - exercises—modest in scale but rich in compositional ventional materials, and the language of weaving with and variation—feature the weaving skills Hicks developed Fig. 36. Fig. 35. Sheila Hicks (American, b. 1934). Rallo, 1957. Wool, 9 ⼀挀 × 5 ⼀椀 in. (24 × 13 cm). Sheets from “Andean Textile Art,” Yale University undergraduate thesis Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, Museum purchase from by Sheila Hicks, ca. 1957. Private collection General Acquisitions Endowment Fund (2006-13-2) 35