Weavings from the Central Andes on view in upcoming textile exhibition

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 25, 2025—A free textile exhibition opening early next year at the Saint Louis Art Museum showcases 18th- and 19th-century weavings from the Central Andes.

“Aymara Weavings: The Indigenous Andes” features skirts, mantles, ponchos and related materials that demonstrate how artists in Bolivia maintained and reinvented ancient artistic practices to express Indigenous identities during the colonial era. The exhibition opens on Jan. 30, 2026.

While pattern and form vary across type, each warp-faced weaving in the exhibition is made from hand-spun and -dyed fibers harvested from camelids such as alpaca and vicuña.

“Indigenous weavers in the Andes are renowned for creating some of the finest textiles in the world,” said Alexander Brier Marr, exhibition curator and associate curator of Native American art. “With an expert command of the process, these artists often ply or weave yarns of multiple colors to achieve luminescent, painterly surfaces.”

Exhibition works showcase not only the technical skill of Aymara artists but also the history of Indigenous self-representation. As Spanish colonists introduced modes of mass-production and banned certain garments, Indigenous artists responded by maintaining and adapting ancestral forms of outerwear, the most visible and formal layer of dress.

“Aymara Weavings” showcases select works from a gift of art by Elissa and Paul Cahn. The exhibition will be on view in Carolyn C. and William A. McDonnell Gallery 100 through Sept. 13, 2026.

CONTACT: Molly Morris, molly.morris@slam.org, 314.655.5250