Wall Power! Spectacular Quilts from the American Folk Art Museum

Wall Power! Spectacular Quilts from the American Folk Art Museum

Quilts are America’s great art experiment: monumental compositions in color, pattern, geometry, and representation, made over more than three centuries, mostly by women. The American Folk Art Museum has been at the forefront of the movement to bring recognition to quilts as a major art form with deep roots in American life and experience. The Museum’s collection is distinctive for highly individualized expressions in this medium that is both yielding and unforgiving, challenging the maker to test the limits imposed by cutting and piecing bits of fabric.

The quilts presented in this exhibition are graphically striking examples that embody a sense of “wall power.” Packing a tough visual punch, the textiles hold space and defy the deceptive softness of their nature. Quilts on view range across time and place from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, from Alabama to Pennsylvania. The four sections of the exhibition highlight early twentieth-century quilts from a period of craft revival, designs developed by Amish communities, examples by African American makers, and traditional nineteenth century patterns that formed a foundation for generations of quiltmakers to come.

Organized by the American Folk Art Museum, New York.