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A resource guide for college students

Explore the art of quiltmaking as an instrument of

social change, storytelling, and artistic craft

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This guide was developed in conjunction with the exhibition “Fabric of a Nation”

This resource guide takes a thematic approach to

exploring American quilts. Produced by a range of artists,

the objects highlighted here demonstrate the enduring

influence of quilts to serve as instruments of social change, underrepresented storytelling, and artistic craft.

using this guide

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Follow along with the exhibition

with your class

Virtually or in class

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From the physical textile trade to the exchange of ideas between

various makers, American quilts have often been tied to communities.

As demonstrated by the following examples, the collective nature

of quilt making lends itself to social activism.

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How can art be an important factor

for social activism?

carla hemlock

“It has always been my intent to

give a voice to the issue and give the

viewer a glimpse into our world.”

Carla Hemlock, Survivors, 2011–13. Cotton plain weave and glass beads; pieced, appliquéd, beaded, and quilted.

The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection. Reproduced with permission.

Carla Hemlock is a Kanienkeháka artist known for both her quilts and her beadwork. Hemlock describes her work as a “commentary on the social, political and historical issues that have confronted us. It has always been my intent to give a voice to the issue and give the viewer a glimpse into our world.” Quilting and beadwork have surrounded Hemlock since childhood, demonstrating cultural continuity and resilience in the Kanienkeháka community despite the effects of European-American settler colonialism... According to Hemlock, “Some of my work is double coded in ways that an Iroquoian Person can read the quilt through symbols, while others may view the same quilt and see its unique designs as purely decorative. The subject matter can sometimes be difficult. What makes the work approachable is that it is done through a quilt. Quilts symbolize comfort and are non-threatening items, this makes my work open to a dialogue on the issue.”

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How have works of art sparked social change in American history?

Irene Williams

Williams’s quilt speaks to the

innumerable obstacles to exercise

this most basic right of citizenship.

Irene Williams, Vote quilt, 1975. Printed cotton plain weave, pieced. Museum purchase with funds from the Frank B. Bemis Fund, the Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, and Gallery Instructor 50th Anniversary Fund to support The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection, and gift of Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the collection of Vanessa Vadim. © Estate of Irene Williams / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

A decade before Irene Williams made her Vote quilt, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Gee’s Bend to speak at the Baptist church. He was there to encourage the residents of the small African American community to exercise their right to vote, assuring them that “You are somebody.” A few weeks later, he was leading the march from Selma to Montgomery when police with dogs attacked the peaceful marchers, a day that became known as Bloody Sunday. Williams’s quilt speaks to the innumerable obstacles that had to be overcome to exercise this most basic right of citizenship. While we don’t know if Williams joined the 1965 march, her use of this red-white-and-blue VOTE patterned cotton shows that the issue resonated with her years later. By combining this dynamic graphic pattern with blocks of solids, checks, and stripes in the same patriotic colors, Williams created a rhythmic collage of her own vision. By making a warm quilt for a family member’s bed, the artist gave new life to old clothing and household textiles, while bearing witness to the struggles and resilience of her community.

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“Fabric of a Nation” helps

us understand American history

through a new lens. Black, Latine,

Indigenous, Asian, and LGBTQIA+ storytellers

enrich our understanding of a holistic American

history by sharing their historically suppressed voices.

SUPPRESSED

voices

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Throughout American history,

marginalized artists were often

intentionally excluded from sharing their narratives. How do you think

these artists were able to share their stories against all odds?

Creola and Georgianna Bennett Pettway

While wider recognition of Gee’s Bend quilts

is an important chapter in the history of American art, to the people who made and used this quilt, it is one of many gifts passed lovingly between generations of Black women—an unbroken thread spanning decades and over a thousand miles.

Probably by Creola Bennett Pettway and Georgianna Bennett Pettway, Bricklayer or Court House Steps quilt, 1950s. Pieced cotton plain weave, quilted. The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection.

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Consider an example of art

helping to advance social activism

in your community.

Hoosier Suffrage Quilt

This quilt embodies the grassroots

political will that fueled battles

fought in statehouses across the

country during the ratification of the

Nineteenth Amendment in 1919–1920.

Unidentified artist, Hoosier suffrage quilt, probably Indiana, United States, before 1920. Cotton plain weave, pieced, embroidered, and quilted.

Frank B. Bemis Fund and with funds donated anonymously.

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Artists identify across a range of

personal identities. Do you think intersectionality is important when

discussing influential artists through

a historical lens, if so why?

Tomie Nagano

Nagano sources her textiles from kimonos, some that belonged to her grandparents and parents as well as more than 4,000 others she has collected over the past 35 years.

Tomie Nagano, Indigo Colour Mixture, 2000. Cotton plain weave; cotton filling; pieced and quilted with polyester thread.

Gift of Wayne E. Nichols. Reproduced with permission.

Tomie Nagano’s quilts blend her love of Japanese traditions and textiles with her interest in American culture and art. Indigo Colour Mixture is one of a ten-quilt series titled Two Hearts in Harmony. Each quilt features a different type of traditional Japanese fabric, and Indigo Colour Mixture is constructed of small pieces of indigo-dyed cotton alternative with textiles dyed in brown and green. Other quilts in the series are made of hemp, wool, silk, and cotton patterned in a range of techniques such as stencil-resist (katazome) and ikat (kasuri). Nagano sources her textiles from kimonos, some that belonged to her grandparents and parents as well as more than four thousand others she has collected over the past thirty-five years. Nagano washed each kimono, took it apart, and then sorted the fabrics by color in her studio in Shiretoku, Shari-town, Hokkaido, Japan. By using these kimonos, Nagano pays homage to traditional Japanese textiles and also honors her family in this series.

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Harriet Powers

By far the most famous quilt in the MFA’s collection, this extraordinary quilt was created by Harriet Powers,

an African American woman who was born into slavery in Georgia in 1837.

How does viewing these quilts from different perspectives provide a wider view of American history?

Harriet Powers, Pictorial quilt, 1895–98. Cotton plain weave, pieced, appliquéd, embroidered, and quilted. Behest of Maxim Karolik.

By far the most famous quilt in the MFA’s collections is the Harriet Powers Pictorial quilt. This extraordinary quilt was created by Harriet Powers, an African American woman who was born a slave in Georgia in 1837. Powers is thought to have orally dictated a description of each square of her quilt to Jennie Smith, who had purchased the first quilt Powers made, and arranged for it to be exhibited at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in 1895. This quilt’s Old and New Testament scenes made it an appropriate gift for a Presbyterian minister. Powers also depicted four stories of natural phenomena and a morality lesson. Many of the events occurred before her birth. Powers’s inclusion of these non-Biblical stories attests to their lasting importance to the artist and her community. This is the first time the Bible Quilt and the Pictorial Quilt—the only known surviving works by Harriet Powers— have been exhibited together.

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Traditionally, quilt making has been seen as domestic craft.

Recognizing quilts in the context of fine art helps us appreciate

the value of this art form, often overlooked because of its

connection to homemaking and folk art.

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What role has

technology played in the development of quilt making in the United States?

Ygnacio Ricardo

and Juan Bazan

This blanket features a serrated design of the type possibly made popular by the Bazan brothers —Ygnacio Ricardo and Juan Bazan—two weavers from Oaxaca who were contracted to come to Santa Fe to improve the quality of weaving around

the region.

Unidentified artist, Rio Grande blanket, American (New Mexico, upper Rio Grande region), mid-19th century. Wool tapestry weave. Gift of the estate of David Rockefeller from the Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller.

Based on its materials, this blanket probably dates to the middle of the nineteenth century. It is woven out of pure churro wool, which after 1860 was more commonly mixed with merino. The use of natural white and brown wool combined with indigo-dyed wool is also more common for the time. It wasn’t until after New Mexico’s annexation that settlers from the eastern United States began to bring to New Mexico imported wools dyed with bright synthetic colors. Originally, the two ends would have had fringe. The Navajo-style bands at top and bottom were added later, possibly when the blanket was sold as a souvenir. This blanket features a serrated design of the type possibly made popular in the area by the Bazan brothers--Ygnacio Ricardo and Juan Bazan-- two weavers from Oaxaca who were contracted to come to Santa Fe to take on apprentices and improve the quality of weaving around the region.

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What barriers may inhibit

certain cultural practices from

being considered fine art?

virginia jacobs

Krakow Kabuki Waltz explores elements with

their own momentum that imply continuation

into space beyond the edges of the actual piece

and even the viewers’ perceptions.

Virginia Jacobs, Krakow Kabuki Waltz, 1987. Cotton plain weave, pieced and quilted. Gift of the artist. Reproduced with permission.

Virginia Jacobs is best known for exploring the sculptural possibilities of the quilt while incorporating the colorful exuberance of the textile arts of many cultures into her work. Although quilt contests and juried exhibitions occasionally included examples of three-dimensional work, exhibitions of fiber art excluded quilts altogether because they were made from commercially printed textiles. Believing that her three-dimensional quilted constructions could overcome this barrier, Jacobs submitted a maquette of this work to the 1985 Lausanne Tapestry Biennial in Switzerland. Although it was denied entry, Krakow Kabuki Waltz gained widespread popular acclaim. It was later shown in multiple exhibitions and appeared on the cover of the May 1987 issue of Smithsonian magazine. Jacobs channels myriad influences into her works that she describes as “a distillation of the continuity and indefatigability of spirit in folk music, dance and costume.” Krakow Kabuki Waltz explores elements with their own momentum that imply continuation into space beyond the edges of the actual piece and even the viewers’ perceptions.

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How would you define “fine art”

and how is this concept relevant

to “Fabric of a Nation”?

sanford biggers

For Biggers, using quilts in his work has

allowed him to explore the tension created by

quilts’ accumulation of meanings over time.

Working with them is, in the artist’s words,

“like embellishing or perhaps defacing history.”

Sanford Biggers, A Deeper Form of Chess, 2017. Quilt, assorted textiles, polystyrene, aqua resin, and tar. Museum purchase with a bequest from Lorraine R. Balkin, Lizbeth and George Krupp Acquisition Fund for Contemporary Art, and The Heritage Fund for a Diverse Collection. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York and Aspen. © Sanford Biggers.

Sanford Biggers’s artistic practice entails combining found objects, paint, video, and music into sculpture, installations, and performance pieces that take an unflinching view of racial violence in the United States and encourage a dialogue with the viewer. For Biggers, using quilts in his work has allowed him to explore the tension created by quilts’ accumulation of meanings over time. Working with them is, in the artist’s words, “like embellishing or perhaps defacing history.” In a Deeper Form of Chess, a casting of a violently manipulated wooden figure stands before a repurposed quilt. Here, the wall hanging is made of a simple tied comforter from the first half of the twentieth century. Biggers has cut the comforter in half and resewn it so that both front and back are visible. For the sculptural element, Biggers chose a piece from his own collection of West African and West African-style sculptures which he has coated with wax and shaped using “ballistic sculpting” from a shooting range. In a process that explores the cycle of erasure and consolidation of individual identity and cultural meaning in the African Diaspora, the figure stands like a chess piece before the geometrically pieced quilt.

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Come see “Fabric of a Nation” in person for the full experience; the exhibition is on display through January 17, 2022,

and tickets are available on the MFA’s Tickets page

Enjoy the exhibition catalogue

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For further reading, please explore the following resources:

Basset, Lynne Zacek. Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Heritage. Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2009.

Baumgarten, Linda, and Kimberly Smith Ivey. Four Centuries of Quilts. Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2014.

Becker, Jane. Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930-40. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: a Global History. New York: Vintage Books, 2014

Crews, Patricia Cox, and Carolyn Ducey. American Quilts in the Industrial Age, 1760-1870. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Eaton, Linda. Quilts in a Material World. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with Henry Francis Dupont Winterthur Museum Inc., 2007.

Hart, Peggy. Wool: Unraveling an American Story of Artisans and Innovation. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2017.

Priddy, Sumpter. American Fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840. Milwaukee: Chipstone Foundation, 2004.

Shaw, Madelyn, and Lynne Bassett. Homefront and Battlefield. Lowell: American Textile History Museum, 2012.

Shaw, Robert. American Quilts: The Democratic Art, 1780-2007. New York: Sterling. 2009.

Resource guide designed by Randall Gee

And a special thank you to Dalia Habib Linssen, Sarah Kirshner, Joanna Mahoney, Jill Bendonis, Sophia Walter, James Zhen,

Jennifer Swope, and Catherine Johnson-Roehr for all your help!