This past spring I attended the Mid America Arts Alliances bi-annual meeting in Lincoln Nebraska. The agenda said that we were to have dinner one evening at "The Quilt House-The International Quilt Study Center and Museum. I was less than overwhelmed about spending the evening in a quilt museum and boy was I wrong!
Founded in 1997 with the donation of the Robert and Ardis James Collection of nearly one thousand quilts, the IQSCM welcomes thousands of visitors each year from every state and from more than thirty countries around the world.
In a magazine article, "Fabric as a Narrative," written by Nancy Anderson and Charlyne Berens, it says, "People seem to identify with quilts. Maybe they slept under one as a child, at their grandmother's house. Maybe they received one themselves. Whatever the case, people all over the world connect with quilts. As we began researching quilting from an international perspective, we learned virtually every continent has a quilting tradition. Many of those traditions are connected as well, through war or trade or colonialization."
Quilt House has several galleries of both rotating exhibitions and works from the museum's world class collection. There are quilts that span more than four centuries and forty countries. At the time of my visit, my favorite exhibition was one titled, "Quilts of Southwest China." The text panel of this exhibition says, "Textiles are material evidence of history and culture and can tell us much about trade, religion, traditions, migration, communities and individuals. The textile traditions in China of making and using quilts or bedcovers have received little attention by scholars, collectors and museums. The research and collecting done for this exhibition provide some of the first documentation of the intangible and tangible cultural heritage associated with the practices of piecing and appliqueing fabric together to form artistic and functional textiles."
Linsey Marshall in an article titled "Turning a Quilt into a Canvas" says that the stitches of modern quilters may soon be hung with famous paintings in galleries, but what makes quilts art is being debated by many in the quilt community. Emily-Jane Hills Orford in an internet article asks when is a quilt a work of art and says, "In the latter part of the twentieth-century, the younger generation started to show a renewed interest in heritage quilts as well as the craft of quilt making. Some artisans even took the craft to greater realms and created stunning works that were too good to just cover a bed and were properly hung for display. Some quilts were even framed. The hanging and framing of a quilt showcases the quilt as an art."
And of course upon my return to St. Louis, I contacted Zoe Perkins, Curator of Textiles at the St. Louis Art Museum and asked her about quilts in its collection and she told me that the museum has about 50 quilts dating from the late 18th century through the present day. She said that the quilts reflect the story of women's education in the U.S. and that they demonstrate the scope of world trade, as well as documenting the technological developments in the textile printing and production in the U.S
Perkins also reminded me that the recent exhibition, "Self -Taught Genius: Treasures From the American Folk Art Museum," featured many outstanding quilts and that the museum recently received a gift of 19 quilts from St. Louisans Richard and Suellen Meyer which added significantly to quilts dating to the first half of the 19th century. She also said that beyond beauty and sentiment, quilt making was one of the ways women could express their political voice in a socially acceptable manner. Thus quilt patterns with the motifs and colors that revealed their political beliefs became popular in the mid nineteenth century. In an exhibition, "Textile: Politics and Patriotism," now hanging at the museum, there are two quilts displayed; one with a "Whig Rose" pattern and one with an opposing view with a pattern called "Whigs Defeat."
Shannon Meyer, senior curator at the Missouri History Museum and Research Center says that The History Museum has over 150 quilts in its collection including a crazy quilt from the 1880s with a real stuffed chipmunk and bird attached to it, a quilt made around the 1820s by Hannah Simpson Grant, mother of Ulysses S. Grant, and an artistic quilt made by local artist Edna Patterson-Petty to commemorate Barak Obama's presidency that was displayed in Washington D.C. during his inauguration.
The techniques of quilt making, the care of quilts, the history of quilt making, etc. could each fill many more pages.
My trip to Lincoln Nebraska opened a whole new world to me and I hope you'll see good quilts at home or wherever you may travel.
Nancy Kranzberg has been involved in the arts community for more than thirty years on numerous arts related boards.
