Image: To God and Truth, 2019. Bisa Butler. Printed and resist-dyed cottons, cotton velvet, rayon satin, and knotted string, pieced, appliquéd, and quilted. Image courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Textiles Close Up
Fabric of A Nation: American Quilt Stories
Wednesday, December 1st
7:00 PM Eastern / 4:00 PM Pacific
$10 TSA Members / $15 nonmembers. You will receive a Zoom link in your registration confirmation email. To become a TSA member and support programs like this, join here.
A recording will be available to everyone who registers for 7 days after the event for later viewing.
Join curator Jennifer Swope for a digital exploration of the exhibition Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from October 10, 2021 through January 17, 2022. Quilts and coverlets have a unique capacity to tell stories: their tactile, intricate mode of creation and their traditional use in the home impart deeply personal narratives of their creators. This exhibition brings together fifty works of art spanning the 17th century to today, drawn mostly from the MFA’s collection. Their makers reflect the diversity and ever-changing nature of America—Black, Latinx, white, Asian American, and Indigenous, also urban, rural, rich, poor, young, old, women and men. By including quilts and works of art made in non-textile media inspired quilts created by sixteen living artists, the exhibition shows that is a living, vibrant art form. Together, the masterpieces in this exhibition tell inclusive, human stories that link us across time and articulate a rich, and richly complicated, story of our shared history.
Jennifer Swope is the David and Roberta Logie Associate Curator of Textiles and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A recipient of a Lois F. McNeil Fellowship, she attended the Winterthur Program in American Culture, receiving a Master’s Degree in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware. Co-author and curator of Quilts and Color, the Pilgrim/Roy Collection, a catalog and exhibition that opened at the MFA in 2014. She is co-author of the publication Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories and co-curator of the exhibition of the same title, now on view at the MFA, closing on January 17, 2022
For questions about the program or registration, contact info@textilesocietyofamerica.org.
Textiles Close Up is a series of study-workshops launched in 2013 that provides opportunities to examine textiles in leading museum and private collections, guided by renowned experts. As precautions for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic restrict travel and gathering, Textiles Close Up has moved online, to give a new type of access and learning opportunities.
*Refund Policy: There are no refunds for Textiles Close Up registration
