MUSEUM news 74 ABOVE: Man’s cloth. Fataluku peoples, Moro, Lautém District, Timor- Leste. Possibly early 20th century. Cotton; supplementary warp. 230 x 70 cm. Fowler Museum at UCLA; Gift of E. M. Bakwin. Photo: Don Cole. LEFT: Weavers in Timor. Laran, Malaka Regency, West Timor, Indonesia, 2011. Photo: Roy W. Hamilton. Poster for L’Éclat des Ombres, l’Art en Noir et Blanc des Îles Salomon at the Musée du Quai Branly. changed as gifts—nurture social relationships. They reveal deep social, religious, historical, and political meanings. Textiles of Timor, Island in the Woven Sea, which will be on display at UCLA’s Fowler Museum from September 7, 2014, to January 4, 2015, is the first major exhibition ever to focus on Timor’s rich textile arts. It features fifty beautifully dyed and intricately patterned cloths, including many from the Fowler Museum’s permanent collection, which is one of the world’s most complete and best-documented collections of Timorese textiles. The exhibition and the book that accompanies it present the stories and works of artists from villages throughout Timor. THE RADIANCE OF SHADOWS Paris—Luminosity and iridescence are omnipresent in the maritime environment of the Solomon Islands, a Pacific archipelago of more than 900 islands that harbors vast cultural diversity. The natural contrast of light and dark there is often associated with the “Shadows,” the powerful spirits of the dead. By reproducing the visual effects of their environment in art objects, the living seek to give material expression to the relations they enjoy with these supernatural beings, and through these remarkable objects, the presence of ancestors manifests itself to help men achieve success in their enterprises, whether building a house for the chief or a canoe to sail the seas. Objects relating to headhunting, fishing, harvest, initiation, marriage, funerary rites, and so on are all rooted in this aesthetic. L’Éclat des Ombres, l’Art en Noir et Blanc des Îles Salomon (The Radiance of Shadows: Black and White Art of the Solomon Islands) will bring a rich collection of these Solomons artworks to the Musée du Quay Branly from November 18, 2014, to February 1, 2015. Look for an article in the next issue of Tribal Art magazine. TEXTILES OF TIMOR Los Angeles—Awareness of Southeast Asia’s textile arts expanded greatly during the late twentieth century. As the region garnered attention from art historians and museum curators and became a popular tourist destination, once-foreign terms like batik and ikat entered the vocabulary of art lovers, fashionistas, and museum goers. However, one major island in the Southeast Asian archipelago stayed unfamiliar to most outsiders. Because of Indonesia’s disputed annexation of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975, the entire island of Timor was considered a sensitive zone by the Indonesian government, which restricted travel there by foreigners. So although scholars recognized that Timor weavers were producing a wealth of textiles, their works remained largely unseen. The women of Timor weave some of the most colorful and varied textiles in all of Southeast Asia. The cotton garments they produce, which often bear intricate patterns linked to specific families or clans, serve as clothing and markers of identity, and—when they’re ex-
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