Visionary Textiles: How Anni Albers Staked a Claim for Herself as a Key Modernist

At the storied Black Mountain College in North Carolina, Anni Albers often instructed her students to return to what she called “point zero.” Imagine, she said, that you have traveled to the Americas in the 10th century, via the Bering strait. You have no available tools, technology, or clothing. You’re hungry and it’s hot and windy. The waters are plentiful with fish. Branches, shells, seaweed and skeletons have washed up on shore. What will you use to weave a net? How w