Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev’s late-1980s emphasis on glasnost—“openness and transparency”—continued in politics and society. Increased dialogue with the West was a hallmark of 1990s glasnost, and groups of American and Russian quiltmakers embarked on some groundbreaking cultural exchange projects. The pieces in this exhibition were made by Russian women who were taught quiltmaking skills by a group of American teachers. The quilts are dominated by images of Russian fairy tales, folk objects, and traditional architecture.

Guest curator David Hornung has selected eleven artists who embrace a spirit of experimentation that reflects prevailing trends in textile construction. These artists’ work honors tradition while pointing to the future. Hornung’s interest in handmade textile crafts dates to a youthful affinity with the aesthetic philosophy of the Bauhaus, which collapsed the hierarchy between “high” and “low” art. For six years in the early 1980s, Hornung made and exhibited work that integrated the vocabularies of Modernist surface organization and traditional patchwork.

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.

The block-style, edge-to-edge geometry for which American quiltmaking is most famous developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in communities and homes that relied on “homespun” for table and bed linens, and workaday garments. Along with agriculture and cooking, weaving constituted a major element of the pre-industrial economy. Looms were conspicuous features in many homes and home workshops, and many people were accustomed to looking at in-progress woven surfaces on a regular basis.

Eliza Jones’ “Song Quilts” are visual interpretations of folk music from four regional traditions in the United States and Russia. Jones, a classically trained musician, transforms field recordings into quilts via a notation method that transposes rhythm into shape and pitch into color. The Song Quilts celebrates folk music and quiltmaking, two traditions that women have used to sustain and build their cultures for centuries.

The word Champloo (alt. Champuru) is Okinawan slang for “mixed up” or “stirred together.” Exploring such quilt-related themes as layering, amalgamation, assemblage, materiality, color, pattern, and non-objective imagery, ten regional artists’ explore quilts and quiltmaking in the context of their own studio practices. In addition to work in a variety of mediums (painting, printmaking, sculpture, textiles, etc.), the show will present the artists’ experiences of engaging with the quilt form.

UK artist Diana Harrison manipulates found items with a variety of techniques that transform them. The fabric, patchwork and quilts in Traces in Cloth retain a visual ‘trace’ of their original state, but are modified by stitching, dyeing, shrinking, bleaching, and printing. The end result is a new textile, with a tactile appeal heightened by a lack of color and an emphasis on the stitched line. Harrison is a senior lecturer in textiles at the University for the Creative Arts, School of Crafts and Design, Farnham.

Shapeshifters inaugurates the “New Views” series in which quilts collected over the last 20 years will be exhibited at the museum for the first time. Made between 1830 and 1930, the cotton and wool quilts in Shapeshifters rely primarily on appliqué for their lively effects.

A trained watercolorist and the daughter of seminal manga (comic book) artist Katsuji Matsumoto, Rumi O’Brien approaches every aspect of her life with an artistic sensibility, from garden design to clothing construction. But it is when she creates her highly imaginative quilts that she is peerless, exceptional, unique. Her quilts are personal narratives, depicting her own stories or fantasies impeccably conceived and exquisitely executed.

Old World Quilts features the earliest and most rare quilts of the IQM collection. The provenance of these quilts remain elusive and thus we turn to shared design elements and materials to identify their place and significance to quilt history. The exhibit includes silk and embroidered whole cloth quilts with pictorial designs and fanciful birds and animals that hale from around the world.