A Horse! A Horse! My Kingdom for a Horse! Assimilation and Transformation in a Contemporary Sumba Textile
with Martha Bluming, Independent Researcher and Collector
VIRTUAL VIA ZOOM
Saturday, March 15, 2025
10 am PT / 1 pm ET / 5 pm GMT – London
ZOOM REGISTRATION
The Bluming collection of textiles has focused on those pieces that contain imagery, helping to define both the
function of the textiles and the ritual ideas that underly them. This contemporary lau [tubular textile worn by
women] from the Indonesian island of Sumba contains a wealth of such iconic imagery, but the images appear to
have morphed from their original animistic function into something reflective of later outside influences as well.
Martha Bluming will reveal the results of the year-long study she undertook to unravel the interesting story of
migration, trade and changing religious beliefs that the weaver has told.
Martha Bluming received a BA from Barnard College and a Master’s degree from NYU. Among other jobs after
college and graduate school, she worked with Stephen Ambrose, the well-known World War II historian, to edit
Dwight Eisenhower’s war years papers for the Johns Hopkins Press. Later she moved with her husband to Kampala,
Uganda for two years, where he ran a cancer research and treatment center for the US National Institutes of Health.
Those years in Africa set both of them on another path, wherein they became interested in travel to the remote parts
of the globe, which in turn began their collecting interests, in particular in the textiles that defined tribal customs and
identity.
As their collection has grown, Martha has been a member of the Director’s Council for the Fowler Museum at UCLA,
and she and her husband, Dr. Avrum Bluming, have given tours of their home collections gallery to local as well as
international groups. Her textile research, initially just a private interest, has also led her to become a lecturer on
tribal material culture for study groups in Los Angeles, and to do deep research on another Indonesian textile in their
collection from Flores, the results of which were published in an article in HALI Magazine.
