ABSTRACT
As design history expands beyond the study of Western subjects, there is a risk that Western narratives and methodologies will continue to dominate (Margolin 2005). New histories will be told about previously ignored parts of the globe, but always relative to a Western worldview-an “advanced” and “modern” West as “silent referent” for an “underdeveloped” East ( Chakrabarty 2000: 28 ). Museums, representative of a long Western tradition of classi cation and the display of Others, are also criticized for imposing one-sided, authoritative versions of history with little room for debate or discussion. Furthermore, histories of museums often focus on the institutions, ignoring the agency of external contributors. Rarely do accounts of exhibitions present the views of those on display or investigate the roles and motivations of those who lend objects or facilitate exhibition development. However, in the case of Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India , an exhibition that took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1955, the archives provide a glimpse into a dynamic, transnational exchange, illustrating the extent to which Indian organizations, academics, and collectors in uenced the curation and presentation. The archives make it possible not only to evaluate the nal exhibition and catalogue, but also to trace the global discussions that led up to them. American and Indian media coverage recorded how the exhibition was received and the impact it made on American taste, fashion, and commerce, with immediate implications for the Indian export market. These sources contribute to a more complete picture of the exhibition, and reveal tensions speci c to that moment and to the US-India relationship, tensions between the modern and traditional, progress and preservation, industrialization and the hand made, art and commerce, design and craft, colonial and post-colonial, socialist and democratic, East and West. Duanfang Lu (2011) questions whether it is possible to move beyond this type of binary opposition in the context of Third World modernism to acknowledge that Western narratives represent only one experience. Indeed, Textiles and Ornamental Arts illustrates that the concept of modernity was shifting in mid-century India, where nation-building and modernization efforts did not follow the Western-prescribed trajectory.
