I didn’t see the MoMA show until Grete took Kaja and me there the week sixth grade ended, a few days before I left for Cleveland and my mother left for San Francisco. Lillian was supposed to come to the museum, too, but at the last minute she decided to get a headache. By that time I was so good at acting like that kind of thing didn’t matter, I almost convinced myself it didn’t.

GRETE WASHINGTON: Lillian was wearing a blue dress I had not seen, quite charming and old-fashioned. I asked her where she found it, my friend who does not shop for clothes. I laughed when she explained this was her high school prom dress from fourteen years ago. I gave her a shawl I had made, and with this combination she looked almost fashionable.

I had attended openings before, but only in galleries. To enter the MoMA in the evening, when it was closed, was exciting. The museum was crowded. Well-dressed men and women were speaking together like old friends, though Lillian and I did not know a single person. When Lillian began taking pictures, I thought this would be noticed, but in a room where everyone was trying to look important, someone like Lillian was easily overlooked. She was taking so many pictures that her film could not have lasted very long, but having her camera at her fingers was more important to her than having new film inside it.

A woman grasped Lillian’s hand. She led us through several rooms, each more and more crowded, until we reached a man with glasses and a lush mustache. This was Mr. Tsaregorodcev. The room was so filled with people and photographs that it would have been difficult to find Lillian’s picture without Mr. Tsaregorodcev’s assistance. I knew the photo well, but seeing it in the museum felt like seeing it for the first time. For Lillian, too, I think, because finally, her camera was at rest.

Numerous people wished to speak to her, though not for reasons she liked. When, in the middle of a disappointing conversation, a person complimented the shawl she was wearing, her face became bright. The artist is here, she told them, and pointed to me. Lillian knew I preferred to be called a weaver, but on that night I did not correct her.

When the MoMA made its first exhibition of textiles two years later, Lillian said to me, You see, Grete, this is not a show of weavers at the Museum of Modern Weaving. This is a show of artists at the Museum of Modern Art. Yes, I told her, and that is why there are no shawls or rugs here. If some person did build a museum for shawls and rugs, this would create the problem of bare floors and cold shoulders.