Students in Professor David Newton’s Fall, 2018 junior design studio considered the role of museums in the 21st century. Are they community centers? Cathedrals for contemplation and communion with objects? What are the benefits—and challenges—of collections-based institutions? What role should technology play in the museum experience?

Artist Rumi O’Brien’s quilts are intimate narratives of her life. Whether set in her everyday world of Madison, Wisconsin or in an imaginary landscape, the quilts are always deeply personal. 
 
Rumi O’Brien grew up in Tokyo, Japan, the daughter of seminal manga (comic book) artist Katsuji Matsumoto. Later, she moved to the United States to train as a watercolorist. For the past 50 years she has lived in Madison, where, several decades ago, she also began making quilts.
 

Quilts are double-sided by definition, but in reality, their utilitarian backs are often ignored in favor of their decorative tops. Emiko Toda Loeb’s quilts are meant to be viewed freestanding, from both sides. She uses a complex technique to sew two-sided Log Cabin blocks, and once assembled, they form two wholly different compositions. Loeb explores a range of geometric and biomorphic forms that break out of the rigid or repeat patterns typically associated with Log Cabin quilts. Sometimes, the elements on either side of a quilt echo one another.

The European Patchwork Meeting convenes every year in Ste-Marie-aux-Mines, in northeastern France, to celebrate the art of quilting. Bordered by Germany and Switzerland, the Alsace region was the birthplace of the Amish movement. In 1693, the followers of Jakob Ammann broke off from their
fellow Anabaptists, and in the early 1900s, many Amish immigrated to Pennsylvania. Today, the Amish are strongly associated with their quilts, which are famous for their bold colors, simple geometry, and fine needlework.

In 1997, I was a master’s student at Indiana University. I had just completed and submitted my application for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s  doctorate program in Textiles, Clothing and Design. My goal was to study quilts with Professor Patricia Crews, a professor doing groundbreaking research in textile history. I wasn’t sure what career path that would lead to,  I was only thinking one step at a time. 

Power, Passion, and Politics was curated by six high school students from Lincoln Public School’s Arts and Humanities Focus Program. Each member of the Politics and Government class, taught by John Clark, selected a politically- or socially-themed quilt from the permanent collection of the International Quilt Museum. Students were able to engage with the quilts in person before writing their labels. Each student composed text contextualizing and explaining the importance of the quilt they selected.

Today, quilt collectors and aficionados know the bright, yellow-orange fabrics that were staples of late nineteenth-century quilts as “cheddar.” The color became especially prevalent in the parts of the United States that were settled by German immigrants: southeastern Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. 

Arts and Humanities is one of Lincoln Public School’s five focus programs. Inspired by their October 2017 visit to the International Quilt Museum—and especially by “The Haunting of Quilt House,” a Halloween pop-up exhibit—students from Arts and Humanities went on to create a “quilt” made from individual paper collages.

During the decades following World War II (1941-45), the United States launched space ships, built modern suburbs, emerged as an industrial giant, and looked toward even greater accomplishments in the future. But as 1976 and the Bicentennial approached, the American people also regained an interest in their personal and collective national heritage. A revived popular interest in quiltmaking and its historical roots were manifestations of this nostalgia.