For the last 3+ years, our world has undergone a traumatic sea change. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced individuals, communities, and entire countries to shift their perspectives, policies, and priorities.

Black at Work examines how quiltmakers represented in the International Quilt Museum collection have utilized the color black as a visual or conceptual element in their textiles. It positions black as a serious and active representational tool with the power to change or enhance the way we see, perceive, and understand the world around us.

April 12 - September 16, 2023
Pumphrey Family Gallery

The International Quilt Museums is pleased to feature a showcase of art quilt history developed by the Studio Art Quilt Associates. Layered & Stitched: 50 Years of Innovative Art showcases 50 art quilts by renowned master artists. Seminal works show the evolution of the art quilt from the earliest pioneers creating during the 1960s through to today’s artists experimenting with new forms, new materials, and new digital technologies.

A group of appliqued and inscribed album quilts made in Ohio’s Miami Valley between 1888 and 1918 are the focus of this exhibition. The albums were given as gifts to young adult to celebrate life’s passages and share folk art designs, fabric and construction methods. The collection was accumulated and researched by scholar Sue Cummings over a thirty-five year period. They comprise one of the most unusual and significant regional quilt styles known.  

March 24 - September 2, 2023
Coryell Gallery

“Red is a neutral,” isn’t just a saying for Freddy Moran. She puts it into practice!

Freddy didn’t start quilting until she was 60 years old. Her daughter in law signed them up for a quilting class. She initially thought she wasn’t interested, but she was pulled in. Early on in her quilting journey, she was drawn to color, and used it with abandon. Her quilting philosophy is, “if it’s not fun, why are you doing it?”

“10 colors don’t work, but 100 do.” Freddy Moran.

New York quilt collector John (Jack) M. Walsh III and art curator Penny McMorris together have established a singularly important collection of studio art quilts. Seeking innovative and extraordinary vision, they acquired pieces by leading art quilters of the Studio Movement, including quilts featured in the Top 100 Quilts of the Twentieth Century and by honorees of the Master of the Medium award from the James Renwick Alliance for Craft. Walsh also collects work by emerging artists.

Paula Nadelstern is known for her use of intricate symmetrical prints in kaleidoscope-themed quilts, employing a distinctive approach that obscures, rather than defines, the seams. Able to find patterns in anything, everywhere she goes, some of Paula’s greatest inspiration comes from her travels and places that are special to her, such as the ceiling of the Spanish Synagogue in Prague in the Czech Republic or the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, USA. In her art, Paula filters every image of inspiration through a kaleidoscopic lens.

“When one faction of American society is excluded from the master narrative

of our collective histories, the whole society loses.”

Quilts by Black quiltmakers always existed within the greater canon of American quiltmaking as it developed in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Quilts, especially those with a narrative element, have been a particularly vital tool that Black makers use to illustrate Black History.