An Art Collection With a Denim Connection

Listening to NPR this morning I caught a story about a pair of sisters–Claribel and Etta Cone–who recently donated their vast collection of turn-of-the-20th-century art to the Baltimore Museum of Art. It wasn’t until the interview turned to the subject of how the Cone sisters could afford to buy such treasures, that I made the connection to the sisters’ surname. Cone sisters=Cone Mills, the denim giant in Greensboro, N.C. Ah-ha!

Among the sisters’ collection is the Matisse above and the two below, which remind me of an exhibition I saw several years ago–Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams His Art and His Textiles–at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Another textile connection!

Some of the Cone sisters’ Matisse pieces are currently on loan to the Jewish Museum in New York where visitors can see Matisse’s attention to textiles on display.