Frank Stella’s Navajo weavings unveiled in Dublin exhibition

After Harriet McGurk contacted Peter Pap about her late husband Frank Stella’s Navajo “Diné” textile collection, Pap spent hours with the five trunks full of weavings and decided only an exhibition would do the collection justice.

“When I took this on initially, I didn’t realize how important this was going to be to the art world,” Pap said.

Patrons interested in Navajo weavings gathered at Peter Pap Oriental Rugs in Dublin on Sunday to hear a discussion of Stella’s collection led by Jill Ahlberg Yohe, curator of the exhibit and curator at the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum, along with Jami Powell, head curator at the Hood Museum of Dartmouth, and Ann Hedlund, director of the Gloria F. Ross Center for Tapestry Studies and curator of ethnology at the Arizona State Museum.

Hedlund started the discussion by asking who had traveled the farthest to be there. While one participant had driven almost three hours from Connecticut, Hedlund joked that she won since she’d flown in from Arizona.

Frank Stella’s collection

Known as a famous American painter, sculptor and printmaker, Frank Stella created art focused on minimalism and abstraction. He died in May 2024 after decades of contributions to the art world.

After Stella was already an established artist, he started collecting Navajo weavings.

Yohe described his collection as a “visual conversation between artists across time and space.”

The majority of the textiles are from the 1880s to 1910s, considered the Transitional Era. All three panelists questioned that term, given that the weavers who made the rugs lived in the moment, not a transition.

“This textile collection of Frank Stella is this period of unbridled experimentation and creativity, where opticality, illusion, play, color theory is all happening,” Yohe said.

Much of the panel focused on the history and practice of weaving in the Navajo Nation, located in the Southwest. Since all three panelists are museum curators, they had plenty to say about the use of Navajo weavings in art exhibits.

Powell pointed out that Navajo textiles have been left out of “traditional art” exhibits, even though the weavers were influenced by the same landscapes at the same time as famous painters. Powell, who recently paired a Georgia O’Keeffe painting with a former Stella weaving in her own exhibit at the Hood Museum of Dartmouth, referenced O’Keeffe often before hearing about Pap’s exhibit.

Hedlund said there are four main takeaways when looking at Navajo textiles: the autonomy to learn through practice and observation; the creativity of generations of weavers learning from each other and from outside influences; the time and dedication needed to prepare — caring for the animals, dyeing the wool and planning the full design before even touching the loom; and, finally, valuing process over product.

“Creativity is more than a way to survive, it’s a way to prosper,” Hedlund said.

New avenue for Peter Pap Rugs

Showcasing Stella’s collection to the public allowed for education about the Navajo Nation and its practices, as well as Stella’s own connection to the textiles.

“It was really worthy of a major exhibition because it essentially was a window into what his eye was and what his taste was,” Pap said.

Like Yohe, Pap said he appreciated seeing the relationship between Stella’s work and Navajo patterns.

“Essentially, [Stella] realized that all the shapes and the angles that he was experimenting with, these weavers were experimenting with 80 years earlier,” Pap said.

With 48 Navajo weavings lining his gallery, Pap said all but five have sold.

This is the first time the 48 pieces have been presented together in a gallery.

“The fact that he bought with a specific taste over 20 to 30 years, but never knew how the pieces related to each other,” Pap said.

This is a new avenue Pap is interested in exploring with other collectors. By showcasing collections that take decades to acquire, Pap believes people will be able to enjoy the collection itself, and the collector will get more respect for their hard work and their money’s worth.

Pap has done gallery exhibitions similar to this before, and he said it’s an emotional time for families, allowing them to see their loved one’s collection celebrated.

“What I’m finding exciting now is the more scholarly aspect,” Pap said.

Another important goal of the exhibit has been to cultivate an educational space. While most of the Navajo textiles will go to their new homes after the exhibition, Pap hired Drum Productions Studio to capture the panel discussion for college courses or public viewing on YouTube.

The exhibit will be up in Peter Pap Oriental Rugs until July 30.

This story has been updated.