Quilt Masterpieces

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.

:The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents "Quilt Masterpieces from Folk Art to Fine Art," an American art exhibition featuring 36 quilts from the Newark Museum's collection. The exhibition will run from June 11 to August 14.

"Quilt Masterpieces from Folk Art to Fine Art" explores the major role that this art form has played in the creative and communal lives of women throughout American history. The quilts, ranging from the late Eighteenth Century to the late Twentieth Century, tell the stories of the women who made them and the people around them. Except for one, all of the quilts in the Newark Museum's collection were made by women who passed down traditions, styles, designs and fabric from one generation to the next in an attempt to express themselves.

The exhibition is divided into four basic sections: The Face of Quilts; The Social Fabric of Quilts; Quilted Memories; and Contemporary Voices in Quilting. Visitors can explore a remarkable range of treasures, from the museum's first purchase, "Wild Goose Chase," made by an unknown artist sometime between 1800 and 1830 to the last one - "Potholders and Dervishes Plus" - made by Sandy Benjamin-Hannibal of Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1996.

The making of a quilt was a labor of love that required an enormous amount of time and patience. Early Nineteenth Century quilts were made entirely by hand, requiring incredible patience and skill. The "Star of Bethlehem" quilt, for example, made in Perth Amboy, N.J., in the early 1800s consists of 800 tiny diamond-shaped pieces of printed cotton aligned perfectly so that the pattern is never unbalanced. Another, "Hexagon Patch," started in 1792, was worked on for more than a decade by a mother and daughter who cut each patch from a pasteboard pattern and then basted it to a second pattern cut from newspaper; they then attached together the patches with 50 to 60 hand-sewn stitches each.

This exhibition highlights a number of quilting traditions, most notably the album quilt and the crazy quilt. In the album quilt, each block is like a page in an album, often initialed or signed by one or more person. One of the most extraordinary examples of this type of quilt is "Bride's Quilt," made as a remembrance of Emeline Dean's childhood home in East Orange, N.J., when she left it to marry. The crazy quilt became popular in the early 1880s. This new craze, inspired by Japanese textiles and design as part of the Aesthetic movement, offered an opportunity for individuality and originality in an era of rigid Victorian social rules. "Map Crazy Quilt," which was made by Mrs A. E. Reasoner in 1815, commemorates her husband's position as superintendent of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. It is one of only two known map quilts.

A gallery talk, given by Ulysses Grant Dietz, curator of "Quilt Masterpieces from Folk Art to Fine Art," will be presented on Sunday, June 26, at 2 pm.

The Williams College Museum of Art is at 15 Lawrence Hall Drive. For information, www.williams.edu or 413-597-3178.