After two decades, the United in Memory 9/11 Memorial Quilt—a collection of 143 quilted panels commemorating the lives lost in the coordinated terrorist attacks—still has resonance. That traumatic day and the changes to life it caused are among the defining moments of Americans’ shared history. Viewing the quilt panels and remembering the events of that day stirs many Americans deeply. However, today many American’s are too young to remember 9/11; other events define the experience of their generation.

David Hornung is an artist, author, and teacher. Over the last 45 years, he has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Brooklyn College, Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, Skidmore College, and Indiana University. Hornung is currently a full professor at Adelphi University on Long Island.

Nexus examines the importance of New York’s museums and galleries in promoting the acceptance of textile and fiber art in the fine art world. A number of groundbreaking exhibitions in the 1960s and ‘70s, including the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Abstract Design in American Quilts, promoted the idea that textiles could be displayed alongside paintings, prints, and sculpture.

Quilts have been part of American folk culture for more than 200 years, but in 1971 a premier art museum raised quilts’ profile by exhibiting them as art in the country’s cultural capital, New York City. Abstract Design in American Quilts at the Whitney Museum of American Art, along with many subsequent exhibitions and much positive publicity—and some negative, opened new spaces for quilts in the evolving American social and cultural landscape.

This exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of Abstract Design in American Quilts, a 1971 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.  Widely credited with helping bring art world attention to quilts, Abstract Design in American Quilts featured graphic pieced quilts hanging on the walls more commonly used to showcase large, mid-20th century abstract expressionist paintings.