American Quilts and Folk Arts: Exhibition Research Guide
Museum of Fine Arts Boston
The William Morris Hunt Memorial Library
Prepared by: Katherine Crowe
This research guide was created to assist in preparations for the arrival of the American Quilts and Folk Arts traveling exhibit on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition features eight quilts and also includes a selection of folk painting and furniture from The Met's American Wing collection, as well as two important paintings by Edward Hicks (American, 1780–1840), on loan from the Peter J. Solomon Family Collection. Online records for some of the items included in the exhibit can be accessed here.
Print Resources
All print resources included in this guide will be held on reserve for docents at the library.
American folk art : a guide to sources / [edited by] Simon J. Bronner.
This volume, though published in 1984, was created by one of the field's foremost bibliographers and should prove a useful compilation of sources concerning American folk art and its study.
This is the catalog of an exhibition held at the Museum of American Folk Art and includes information on American folk art and the items included in the exhibit - a representative sampling of utilitarian and decorative objects from the museum's permanent collection. The bibliography may also prove useful.
The Artist & the quilt / edited by Charlotte Robinson.
This annotated catalog documents a special exhibit of twenty quilts designed and created by contemporary artists in honor of the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century American women who transformed quilting into a creative art The exhibit appeared in museums in San Antonio, Sept. 10-Oct. 22, 1983, and other cities. The catalog includes bibliographical references and an index.
The history of the patchwork quilt : origins, traditions and symbols of a textile art / Schnuppe von Gwinner.
This book discusses the origins, traditions, and symbols of patchwork in clothing and quilts through a variety of multi-national examples. The book includes color and black and white images and an extensive bibliography.
The Oxford companion to the decorative arts / edited by Harold Osborne.
This reference work covers all of the major fields of decorative craftsmanship as well as many more specialized ones, entries on important craftsmen and schools, and surveys of specific cultures and periods.
Quilts and color : the Pilgrim/Roy collection / Pamela A. Parmal, Jennifer M. Swope.
This is the catalog of the most recent previous exhibit held at the MFA concerning quilts and folk art, Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection which ran from April 6 to July 27, 2014. Quilts and Color included more than sixty American quilts from the Pilgrim/Roy Collection, one of the largest collections of quilts in the world.
Electronic Resources
Encyclopedia of American folk art [electronic resource] / Gerard C. Wertkin, editor ; Lee Kogan, associate editor ; in association with the American Folk Art Museum.
This online encyclopedia is the first comprehensive, scholarly study of American folk art and includes 600 cross-referenced and indexed articles with full bibliographies as well as both black and white and color photographs.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
Managed by the Met, this timeline includes thematic essays on a range of topics. Each article includes a bibliography and links to related sources. The three essays listed below are all relevant to this exhibit, though there may be other useful articles included in the timeline.
Nineteenth-Century American Folk Art - Carrie Rebora Barratt
American Quilts and Coverlets - Amelia Peck
The Materials and Techniques of American Quilts and Coverlets - Elena Phipps
This collection at the Library of Congress includes resources from the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection and the Lands' End All-American Quilt Contest Collection at the American Folklife Center. These collections include recorded interviews and images from these two collections. Items from the collection and related resources are included here on the Library of Congress' website.
This guide was created for teachers to assist in the creation of lesson plans using the Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996 collection. Though this guide was created with K-12 teachers in mind, the information included may still prove useful and some of the activities could potentially be adapted for a more sophisticated audience.
Electronic Resources: Video
This collection of videos published by the American Folk Art Museum all concern matters of folk art and may prove useful in preparation for this exhibit.
This is the full-length recording of a lecture given by collector Gerald Roy about the exhibit at the MFA and the history of quilt makers and their relationship with color.
Additional Resources
This museum, located in Lowell, MA, is the only museum in the Northeast that is dedicated to the art and history of quilt making. A visit to this museum would be an interesting source of information, though their website includes several online resources as well, including the Mass Quilts Documentation Project, information regarding current and past exhibits, and their online museum library catalog.
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