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In Memoriam: Ted Hallman

The American Craft Council remembers the textile artist and ACC Fellow, who passed away in June.

By Beth Goodrich
July 27, 2026

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Fiber & Textiles

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Ted Hallman in his installation Suspended Harmonies at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, 2013.

Textile artist and 1988 American Craft Council Fellow Ted Hallman died on June 23 at the age of 92. A multifaceted visual artist and musician, he was most widely recognized for his fiber creations of exuberant color and intricate pattern and texture.

Henry Theodore “Ted” Hallman, Jr., was born in 1933 and grew up in Souderton, Pennsylvania. He was the son of noted painter and educator Henry Theodore Hallman, Sr., a professor at West Chester University. Ted Jr. made good use of his father’s art studio while in high school, building his own Irish harp, weaving loom, and pipe organ. He attended Temple University, where he received a BFA in painting and a BA in art education in 1955.

An accomplished musician, Hallman was offered a full scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music, which he declined. He instead accepted a scholarship from the Pew Memorial Foundation to attend the Fontainebleau Schools of Music and Fine Arts in France, where he studied pipe organ and painting.

Photo by Steve Mack, courtesy of the Kenneth G. Mills Foundation

The Cathedral, a luminous textile from Hallman's Sunrise Twills with Titles series, 1979–1984, 31 x 28.5 x 1 in.

Hallman returned to the United States in 1956 and enrolled at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to pursue an MFA in painting, which he completed in 1958. His attraction to fiber art led him to expand his minor in textiles—under the tutelage of renowned artist, designer, teacher, and 1985 ACC Fellow and 1993 Gold Medalist Marianne Strengell—into a second MFA in textile art.

Hallman attracted the attention of ACC staff in the late 1950s. He won first prize in textiles in the Young Americans 1958 competition and exhibition and a bronze medal in the Designer-Craftsmen U.S.A. 1960 competition, both at New York City’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (now the Museum of Arts and Design). Throughout the 1960s, Hallman’s work was featured in nearly a dozen shows at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, including the seminal OBJECTS: USA exhibition in 1969.

Hallman was invited to head the textiles department at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, and went on to pursue a PhD in educational psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1975, he accepted a teaching position at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and soon rose to become head of the textiles department. He retired from full-time teaching in 1999, but he continued to teach workshops, give lectures, and exhibit his work.

Photo by Ferdinand Boesch

Hallman's Acrilon and steel frame installation Meditation Environment was a part of the exhibition Contemplation Environments, on view from January 16 to March 18, 1970, at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City.

Hallman’s affinity for music was intertwined with his textile practice. The Sunrise Twills with Titles series, perhaps his best-known works, was inspired by hearing the choral performance of a group under the direction of Canadian artist and speaker Kenneth G. Mills. Over the course of three years in the late 1970s, Hallman wove a series of 18 intricate twill structures with colorful hand-dyed yarn; Mills supplied titles for the works. Sunrise Twills with Titles traveled to 22 venues in the US and Canada in the 1980s. In the ensuing years, Hallman often incorporated live musical performance into his exhibitions.

As a leader in the fiber arts movement and respected figure in advancing American studio craft, Hallman received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was inducted into the ACC College of Fellows in 1988. His work can be found in collections around the world, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, among others.

To learn more about Hallman, watch a 2013 interview conducted by former ACC Librarian Jessica Shaykett on ACC’s YouTube channel, or read and listen to an oral history interview from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, conducted by gallerist Helen Drutt English in 2006.

Photo by Steve Mack, courtesy of the Kenneth G. Mills Foundation

Shangri-La, another woven piece from Hallman's Sunrise Twills with Titles series.

Photo by Geoff Patton

Hallman makes an adjustment in his installation Suspended Harmonies at the Michener Art Museum, 2012.

Beth Goodrich is an independent librarian and archivist specializing in the arts. She was previously the librarian and archivist for the American Craft Council from 2017 to 2025.

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