Selected Past Exhibitions

Shelley Thornton. Image credit: Barbra Porter.

Shelley Thornton: Textile Art Dolls

Monday, June 3, 2019 to Friday, September 13, 2019

Closed Labor Day, Monday, September 2, 2019. The work of Lincoln, Nebraska native and lifelong artist Shelley Thornton is currently on exhibit in the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, through September 6, 2019. A printmaking and graphic design graduate of what is now the Hixon-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts at UNL, Thornton turned to the medium of textiles in the early 1990s, and since that time has established herself as one of the leading dollmakers working in the US.

Image: Courtesy of UNL Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Taken in fron of what is now Architecture Hall, ca. 1900. Color inset photo by TMFD student Alison Cloet.

What We Wore: Dressing Well at UNL

Monday, March 25, 2019 to Friday, May 10, 2019

On February 15, 1869 the University of Nebraska was officially chartered as a part of the Morrill Act. The Morrill Land-Grant Act provided 30,000 acres of federal lands to the newly admitted state of Nebraska (1867) to create a university that would provide a “liberal and practical education” to its citizens, including women. From Alice Frost, the first woman graduate, to Louise Pound and her support of athletics for women, to Grace Margaret Morton and her widely used textbook The Arts of Costume and Personal Appearance, women, both faculty and students, have played an important role in the history of the university.

Image: **Post Japan Stones**. Paint and pigment on fabric, 68" x 75".

Astrid Bennett: The Tarp Series

Monday, December 17, 2018 to Friday, February 15, 2019

The University of Nebraska’s Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery features the exhibition Astrid Hilger Bennett: The Tarp Series, December 17, 2018 – February 1, 2019. Over decades, Bennett’s work has focused on painted, printed and dyed textiles in the form of wall pieces and functional items. In her current body of work, she also includes drawing and mixed media, creating large tarps and small scrolls.

Jatin Sharma at work, Nathdwara, December 2016.

Pigment on Cloth: Tradition, Family, and the Art of Indian Pichvai Painting

Monday, August 13, 2018 to Friday, November 16, 2018

This special exhibition introduces our audiences to the historic Indian practice of pichvais, devotional paintings on cotton cloth made as temple hangings in Nathdwara, Rajasthan. The exhibition presents work from one contemporary family of Nathdwara pichvais painters who represent the fifth, sixth and seventh generations of pichvais painters in their lineage. The exhibition will document their continuing creation of these visual narratives, long associated with Nathdwara's Shrinathji temple.

Merchandising competition/installations - To See and Be Seen

Monday, April 9, 2018 to Friday, May 18, 2018

Visual merchandising is as much art as commercial enterprise. Strong design strategies interpreting imaginative themes bring excitement and wonder to fashion retailing. For the first time, TMFD students will team up with several local retailers to plan and execute thematic visual merchandising displays in the Hillestad Textiles gallery.

Spiral Descendent. 2017; archival museum board, silk, dye, thread, pigment; approximately 7 ft high.

Ancestors/ Descendants

Monday, February 5, 2018 to Friday, March 23, 2018

Artist Jason Pollen will speak about his work in the Hillestad Gallery at 5:00 p.m. on First Friday, February 2, 2018. Please join us for this special event.

Madison and Matthew Creech - This Must Be the Place

Monday, December 4, 2017 to Friday, January 26, 2018

The gallery will be closed beginning noon, Friday, December 22, 2017 through Monday, January 1, 2018. The gallery will reopen at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 2, 2018.

"This Must Be the Place," an exhibition of unusual quilts by artist couple Madison and Matthew Creech, runs through Jan. 26 in the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Patchwork and Quilts of North Karnataka, India

Monday, October 16, 2017 to Friday, November 17, 2017

Quilting is both a practical craft and an art form practiced around the world. In both craft and art, quilting tells the story of the culture from which it takes its form. This exhibition presents Quilts from North Karnataka, emphasizing the diversity of patchwork in this region of southern India. Former TMFD merchandising faculty member Dr. Shubha Bennur has gathered a great deal of data and documentation on the quilts of Karnataka, from five regions in that state. In travels there she interviewed a number of quilters and their family members.

Celebration of Youth XXIV

Monday, September 11, 2017 to Saturday, September 30, 2017

The annual exhibition “Celebration of Youth XXIV” continues through September 30^th at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery. As with all twenty-three preceding iterations of the exhibition, this one showcases the work of youth from around the state, who competed at the Nebraska State Fair in the 4-H areas of Clothing, Home Environment, and Quilt Quest.

"Girls" and "Geometric C," screenprints by Alexander Girard.

Alexander Girard and Textile Design at Mid-Century

Monday, May 22, 2017 to Friday, September 1, 2017

Hillestad Gallery summer 2017 exhibition opens May 22

The exhibition “Alexander Girard and Textile Design at Mid-Century” opens in the Robert Hillestad Gallery on May 22, 2017 and continues through September 1. The exhibition features Girard’s designs from the department’s historic textiles collection alongside fashion of the period, to examine how trends in textile pattern, color and fiber were connected across multiple design fields and served as expressions of modernity.