One of the world’s finest collections of early American quilts will be on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum May 22–September 6, 2010. Featuring rare surviving textiles of the late 1700s and early 1800s from Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, Delaware, American Quilts outlines America’s earliest cultural landscape in stunning detail.
American Quilts features more than 40 exquisite quilts whose fabric, design, and stitching combine to provide an extraordinary visual experience. These works of art also present a wealth of new information about the lives of their makers and the world around them. Quilts make political statements, celebrate marriages, and document the early global textile trade. Close examination of these quilts show the frugal recycling of a pair of men’s wool breeches, or the special purchase of fashionable and expensive fabrics. The exhibition includes some of the finest and earliest American printed textiles, a quilted Indian palampore, and a kaleidoscopic sunburst quilt featuring over 6,700 pieces of printed cotton.
“At first, fabric itself was a status symbol reflecting wealth and worldliness,” said Mel Buchanan, assistant curator of 20th-century design. “But the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of an American textile industry enabled affordable fabrics to become more widely available. From this array of materials, more women could produce quilts that served as an important part of their personal, family, and community identity in a constantly changing world.”
American Quilts explores how quilts were made to commemorate life-changing events for individuals, families, or entire communities. The rare quilts on view were passed through generations and, in turn, have become beautiful repositories of history and memory that document women’s political, social, and cultural lives in the early American republic.
Winterthur is the former home of Henry Francis du Pont, one of the 20th century’s most avid antique collectors and horticulturists. Many of the works featured in this exhibition were collected by du Pont himself.
American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection is sponsored at the Milwaukee Art Museum by the Museum’s Friends of Art. The exhibition is organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. The exhibition is curated by Linda Eaton of Winterthur Museum and organized at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Mel Buchanan, Liz Flaig, and Catherine Sawinski.
The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt
In conjunction with American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection, the Milwaukee Art Museum asserts that quilts were then and are today precious repositories of memory by presenting The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt, on view June 8–20 , 2010 in the Museum’s Schroeder Galleria. Coinciding with PrideFest Milwaukee, June 11–13, the exhibition is comprised of the original quilt designed by the Milwaukee AIDS Project, along with eight AIDS Quilt panels designed by 30 of the world’s foremost fashion designers, including Dolce & Gabbana, B.C.B.G., Versace, Ralph Lauren, Isaac Mizrahi, Donna Karan, and Oscar de la Renta.
This touching quilt is the largest community folk art project in the world. Founded in 1987, The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a poignant memorial and a powerful tool for use in preventing new HIV infections. The more than 45,000 colorful panels that make up the quilt memorialize the life of a person lost to AIDS. The quilt currently contains more than 91,000 names, which represents approximately 17.5% of all U.S. AIDS deaths. The traveling sections of the quilt have been viewed by more than 18 million people and have generated more than $4 million to benefit those living with AIDS.
The Milwaukee Art Museum’s presentation of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is made possible by the support of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Johnson and Pabst LGBT Humanity Fund. It is organized at the Museum by Mel Buchanan.
HOURS AND ADMISSION
The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults and $10 for students, seniors and active military, and is free for members and children 12 and under.
ABOUT THE MUSEUM
The Milwaukee Art Museum’s far-reaching holdings include more than 20,000 works spanning antiquity to the present day. With a history dating back to 1888, the Museum houses a collection with strengths in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, contemporary art, American decorative arts, and folk and self-taught art. The Museum includes the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion, named by Time magazine as “Best Design of 2001.”
www.mam.org
Image: Appliqué counterpane, 1800–25. Cotton, 100 x 92 in. Courtesy, Winterthur, Museum purchase with funds provided by Mr. Samuel Pettit in memory of his wife, Sally Pettit