Virtual Insights: Intimate Stories Through Textiles

Join curators Emelie Gevalt and Sadé Ayorinde behind the scenes of What That Quilt Knows About Me to learn more about the artworks, the artists and the themes included in this exhibition.

Featuring approximately 40 quilts and related works of art from more than two centuries ago into the present, the exhibition What That Quilt Knows About Me presents a large and rich selection of artworks chosen from the Museum’s own collections of American textiles.

In this program, curators Emelie Gevalt and Sadé Ayorinde walk us through the exhibition, which is not organized by time period, style, culture, or technique. Instead, the visitor is encouraged to revel in a wide range of objects and their stories, and focus attention on the intimacy of the human-textile relationship.

Inviting the viewer to admire quilts up-close and from a distance, their visual beauty and craftsmanship beyond their utilitarian function, this curatorial presentation will provide an in-depth study of quilt making in the United States. The curators will share how artists have continually drawn inspiration from and pushed at the boundaries of needlework to incorporate surprising materials and ideas, challenging us to reconsider the practice of quilt making, its tradition and history.

Image: Hystercine Rankin (1929–2010), Untitled Family History Quilt, Port Gibson, Mississippi c. 1990–2000. Cotton with ink, 40 x 62 in. American Folk Art Museum, New York, gift of Evelyn S. Meyer, 2005.10.3.