Colleen Lynch
Not Your Grandmother’s Quilt
Contemporary Quilt Art in America 2015
Exhibition Jan 1st - March 15th
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Welcome docents! This newest exhibition is quite unique and covers a rare area of interest, one which many of you may know little to nothing about. Rest assured, this handout will help familiarize you with the subject, and offers a host of resources for you to seek out and explore in your preparations for the opening.
Below are materials available to you from our own library, the Thomas J. Watson Library’s online catalog, which I encourage you to start with as they are readily available to you. More importantly, as docents you are privileged with access to the collection that goes beyond what is available to the public. Many of these materials are primary sources, and to fully understand what you are to convey to patrons for this exhibit you are expected to use both physical and digital resources.
I will say the literature on modern art quilts is limited in our catalog-- historical quilting and folk art are well-represented, but contemporary quilting is another thing entirely. Therefor, each of the items listed is highly invaluable, and I encourage all of you to fully engage with them.
1) Buszek, M E. (ed). Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
2) The Dairy Barn Cultural Arts Center and Dragon Threads Ltd. Quilt National 2013: the best of contemporary quilts. Worthington OH: Dragon Threads, 2013.
3) Harkavy, D. and Zuniga-West, F. Assembling Narratives: Quilting Impulses in Contemporary Art: Sabrina Gschwandtner, Karolyn Hatton, Faith Ringgold, Donna Sharrett, John Sims and Anna Von Mertens. Exhibition Catalogue, Apr 11 - June 27 2010, Dorsky Gallery, Long Island NY: Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs 2010.
4) Mazloomi, C. And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations. Atglen PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2015.
5) Studio Art Quilt Associates; Adams, D (designer). Portfolio 21: the Art Quilt Sourcebook. Storrs CT: Studio Art Quilt Associates, 2014.
6) Warren, E V. Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum. New York: Rizzoli, 2010.
7) Zegart, S. (Executive Producer). (2011). Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics [videorecording - 9 part television series]. Louisville, KY: Kentucky
Quilt Project Inc.
Because of the limited amount of information available for contemporary quilt art in the Watson Library collection, I have assembled a list which includes unaffiliated resources for you to utilize to increase you subject-knowledge beyond the Met’s provisions. Here you will find websites, online databases, and journals either freely accessible on the web or only available through your Watson Library account online. These resources are especially important for the docents involved, as your studies will be of the current and ever-changing quilt art scene, which necessarily lives and develops online in digital and social spheres.
The resources listed below are therefor imperative for all docents to consult in order to orient yourselves to the fullest extent before working the exhibition.
1) Folkartmuseum.org
1) Folkartmuseum.org
The American Folk Art Museum is located in Manhattan, New York, and serves as a premier showcase for folk or “self-taught artists” in America throughout history, and including works of today. The museum’s collection includes over seven-thousand works, including many “dazzling quilts...by living self-taught artists.” As an important source of scholarship and information in the field, this website is a must for anyone encountering folk art for the first time, but more than that it has a consistent presence in the art world of today, so it is the best place to begin any search for information on quilt art of the 21st century. The museum’s digital collection is fantastic, but if you can, please visit the museum in person, it is wonderful!
One exhibition I want you all to look at is called “alt_quilts” and contains artworks from three top quilt artists in the nation. I want you to discover as much as you can about two of the artists specifically: Sabrina Gschwandtner and Luke Haynes, as their work is renowned in this medium and you will find no better example of the power of the quilt in modern art.
This database is published through EBSCO and can only be accessed via your login at our website. It offers “full-text coverage of periodicals and books with coverage in the Arts.” Materials include digital images, e-books, full text, indexes and abstracts and scholarly journals. This is a perfect portal for you to seek information about the art world today, and the quilt’s place in it, in a myriad of different and enriching formats.
3) JSTOR
The Watson Library offers access to several subsets of the JSTOR online database, which includes JSTOR Arts and Sciences 1 through x1. Offering full text coverage of many scholarly titles in the arts field, this is a good place to look for information art throughout history and of the present. The newest literature on modern quilting and quilt art in America would be made available here, so check it out.
The Folk Art Messenger is an online magazine published quarterly by the Folk Art Society of America, and is available by membership/subscription. It features articles about self-taught artists, reviews on exhibitions and books in the folk art field, news and an international calendar of events. There are many articles available for search online by subject, and big names in the contemporary folk art field are mentioned throughout, so the magazine is a hub for information relating to contemporary quilt art in America.
Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the High Museum of art showcases works by folk artists from the South. “The High” counts itself as “the only general art museum in the country to have a full-time curator devoted to this genre,” which makes it an especially important resource. As much of folk art history has to do with the Southern United States, this museum’s website is a must-visit to grasp even a small part of what has led to and influenced contemporary art quilts.
This museum is located in the far South in New Orleans, Louisiana. It offers a whole host of pertinent resources online and serves as a standard connection to the contemporary folk art world. I would advise you to read up on their various exhibitions, current, past, future, and traveling, as there are many, and so much detail provided.
7) SAQA
Studio Art Quilt Associates is an online membership association rather than a museum, but its website is superior to the others in many ways. There you will find publications, Art Quilt news, a list of Art Quilt resources, and much more. SAQA provides an invaluable journal to its members, published quarterly and in full color, mailed exclusively but which also offers all of its back issues freely online. The most important aspects of the journal for you are its features on individual and groups of artists, as well as its samples of work from the SAQA’s exhibitions.
Studio Art Quilt Associates is an online membership association rather than a museum, but its website is superior to the others in many ways. There you will find publications, Art Quilt news, a list of Art Quilt resources, and much more. SAQA provides an invaluable journal to its members, published quarterly and in full color, mailed exclusively but which also offers all of its back issues freely online. The most important aspects of the journal for you are its features on individual and groups of artists, as well as its samples of work from the SAQA’s exhibitions.
One exhibit I’d encourage you to check out is “LIMITED PALETTE” curated by Shea Wilkinson, who explained her motivation behind the selection: “The pieces that jumped out at me were the quilts with the most limited color palettes. There is an attraction to the complexity that arises from a basis of simplicity. Each piece, with its own subtle variations in hue, draw the viewer to peer into them as if time has become suspended.”
Here is the list of selected artists and works in the order in which they were displayed:
Hands Off - Maggie Vanderweit
Urban Flight - Deborah Melton Anderson
Diptych Blue Ghosts -Joanne Alberda
Awareness - Karen Rips
Do the Doodle - Paula Kovarik
Solar Storm (diptych) - Regina Benson
This indispensable directory of quilt artists contains a great deal of information about specific artists working in the quilt art scene today, down to their location, the names of their artworks and sometimes accompanying pictures, their websites which oftentimes hold even more information. Quilt National is a biennial juried competition “dedicated to the promotion of the contemporary art quilt.” Each of the selection of over 700 artists detailed comes from participants and winners.
Visions Art Museum is a great museum and resource in general, but the website has many exhibitions (I will list a couple here) that would be eye-opening for docents and offer a full indoctrination into the quilt art of today. A few of the online exhibitions offered are entitled by theme such as Still Life, Moving Parts, Red Hot, and Stories. Current exhibitions (not yet available online) are worth looking into as well. They are:
-October 17, 2015—January 3, 2016 Interpretations: Celebrating 30 Years,
-October 17, 2015—January 3, 2016 Excavating for Meaning
-October 17, 2015—January 3, 2016 Hearing the Quiet: Walking the Creeks
For a taste of local quilt art, visit the Boston Modern Quilt Guild’s blog, which describes itself as “a group of people who are passionate about modern quilting, patchwork, and sewing.” This is a good resource for current events, trends and insider-information on new shops to visit or website recommendations.
This museum is another resource closer to home. Located in Lowell, Massachusetts, the NEQM bills itself as “the only museum in New England dedicated to the art and history of quiltmaking.” And while it is not with the history of quilting we are concerned, the website is still a great place to find information. It has an exciting section on Exhibitions and Events, one of which I encourage every docent to attend if possible, though our exhibit will be over by then: BUTTERFLY WHIRL, Contemporary Quilt Art, May 4 - July 10, 2016.
Most importantly, however, the NEQM has an online library catalog with more than 5000 books and 100 videos on all things quilt.
12) ARTnews - Avant-Garde Quilt Explosion!
Founded in 1902, ARTnews is the oldest and most widely-circulated art magazine in the world. Its world-wide audience is made up of “collectors, dealers, historians, artists, museum directors, curators, connoisseurs, and enthusiasts.” The quarterly print magazine has innumerable amazing articles and collections offered online, and is personally one of my favorite art web portals. Specifically, however, I want you to read this web exclusive, published in 2014 by Robin Cembalest, “Avant-Gard Quilt Explosion!” It is a “guide to weird and wild contemporary-art quilts by conceptualists, code-breakers, feminists, fashionistas, Afrofuturists, and street artists” and is the one resource I will be quizzing you on. This is because of all the resources included here, every amazing source of information available to you out there in the world, I cannot thing of a more perfect representation of the very spirit of our upcoming exhibition. If you read nothing else, if you ignore all else in this handout (which you should absolutely not), I would have you read just this article, it is that important to your docent training.
Happy researching, and feel free to get in touch with me if you find any trouble accessing these resources or have other questions.
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