This gem is the country’s only textile museum. Galleries hold exquisite fabrics and carpets. Exhibits revolve around a theme, say Asian textiles depicting dragons or Kuba cloth from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and rotate a few times a year. Bonus: the museum shares space with George Washington University's Washingtonia trove of historic maps, drawings and ephemera.
The museum is old (founded in 1925) but the building is brand spankin' new (opened in early 2015). The collection also includes rare kimonos, pre-Columbian weaving, American quilts and Ottoman embroidery. (Find the flaw: traditional textile artists, from Islamic carpet makers to Appalachian quilters, weave intentional flaws into their work to avoid mimicking God’s perfection.) Accompanying wall commentary explains how the textiles mirror the social, spiritual, economic and aesthetic values of the societies that made them.
