Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, Summer 1984 Page: 1
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Major Gift from the McDermott Foundation
Celebrated by the Exhibition
Selections from the Steven G. Alpert Collection
of Indonesian Textiles
May 25 - July 15
Among those cultural areas where cloth has had special
significance apart from its practical use as clothing, Indo-
nesia is unsurpassed in the integration of form and func-
tion, color and texture, pattern and symbol in textiles that
are objects of prestige and wealth, that are often thought
to have protective powers, and that can even be consid-
ered sacred. The Museum takes great pleasure in an-
nouncing a recent and very important gift from the
McDermott Foundation, the Steven G. Alpert Collection
of Indonesian Textiles, selections from which will form
the first textile exhibition in the Museum's Print and
Textile Gallery May 25-July 15, 1984.
Of the 11 islands included in the 76-piece collection,
the major style areas of Sumatra, Sumba, Sulawesi, and
Borneo (Kalimantan and Sarawak) are represented in
depth and by esthetically superior examples; these tex-
tiles are about two-thirds of the collection in number.
Pieces from Bali, Sumbawa, Savu, Roti, Flores, Lomblen,
and Timor, many equally fine, make up the remaining
third. The 21 textiles in the exhibition were chosen to
reflect the areas of strength while including key pieces
from other islands as well.
Highlighting the Sumatran material are textiles from
the southern Lampung region: richly patterned ceremonial
sarongs, resplendent with silk embroidery, metal-wrapped
yarns, and tiny mirror fragments; small ceremonial cloths
with bold and fanciful bird and animal images, tampans
that wrapped the gifts exchanged as part of the complex
system of adat, or customary law; and the long cloth with
its powerful ship image, protective symbol of transition
during rites of passage, the palepai that was hung during
ceremonies to define the ritual space and the rank of theparticipants. The palepai in the exhibition (and illustrated
on the cover of the Bulletin) represents a rare, smaller
type identified by its precisely rendered motifs and su-
perb craftsmanship.
Probably the most familiar of Indonesian textiles is the
man's shoulder or hip cloth (hinggi) from Sumba, the
designs of which are created by tying and dying the warp
yarns before weaving - ikat, the primary decorative tech-
nique for textiles throughout Indonesia. The hinggi in-
cluded in the exhibition is an older style, with a broad,
delicately figured center field and an intricately twined
border above the fringe. The textile paired with the
hinggi in Sumbanese gift exchange is the lau, the
woman's sarong or tubular skirt. Primal human figures
and animals (here horses and a giant fish) can appear
even more dramatic on the skirts, especially when they
are woven in white yarns that contrast starkly with the
dark blue or red of the ground.
Although the Toraja of Sulawesi (Celebes) made superb
ikat-patterned cloths that were used as shrouds in the
areas where they were woven and as clothing or cere-
monial hangings by other Toraja groups, they also pro-
duced two distinctive textiles that were considered
sacred. The sarita is a long, narrow cloth patterned by
painting or batik in dark blue or brown; it is flown as a
banner to indicate a funeral ceremony or used as a
turban-like headdress for a tau-tau, an ancestor figure in
wood, or for a shaman. The maa' (or mawa') is the
shaman's sacred textile, a painting characterized by the
rhythmic repetition of a single form, a symbol of actual or
ritual wealth among the Toraja (crosses, bees, buffalo, or
certain plant forms), in a scene personifying energy The
exhibition includes one ikat-patterned shroud or hanging,
three saritas, and a magnificent maa'
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Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, Summer 1984, periodical, Summer 1984; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth224963/m1/3/?q=%221984~%22: accessed August 15, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Dallas Museum of Art.