The International Quilt Study Center & Museum - Textile history comes alive in the finist quilt museum in the world

By Maureen Ose

Passion fueled the building of the world’s largest collection of quilts. More intense dedication led to the construction of a glorious new home for the quilts. Lincoln, Neb., is now home to the finest quilt museum in the world.

Why quilts? Why a quilt museum?

Quilt shows and festivals, quilt symposiums, quilt stores, quilt romances, and now for the love of Pete, a quilt museum built right on top of the former location of a perfectly adequate tattoo parlor. This phenomenon is clearly bigger than the pet rock. It may even surpass Sudoko in staying power. What is it about quilts?

I asked that question when I joined UNL’s International Quilt Study Center 30 months ago. Up-front disclosure: I do not quilt. That said, and the smelling salts passed around, I have a fondness for cloth and color and do my fair share of sewing and weaving. Raised on an Iowa farm in the ’60s, I absorbed it all. I slept under quilts, wrapped my dolls in quilts and received a quilt as a traditional wedding gift from my grandmother. Nevertheless, it seemed there was never time to quilt. Once I breathed the rarified air of the University of Iowa in the ’70s, it was certain: Quilt fever had not infected me.

It is too late for the inoculation now. Today I am a humble devotee. How did that happen?

A few days into my first month at “quilt central,” a colleague shared a new arrival. I saw a simply designed, eloquently stitched blue-and-brown quilt, embroidered with date 18XX, shockingly chopped in two pieces with one-eighth of it lying unevenly beside the rest. What naughty child could not sit down for a week after that deed was done?

And there it was. That quilt sucked me right in without warning. With its plain face and awkward presentation, it had immediately ignited my imagination. There I was with the quilter when she (maybe he) discovered the severed remnants of hours of work, yards of fabric and thread, and too many pricked fingers to count.

Turns out it was a very early example of Amish quilting, likely from Lancaster County, Pa., mecca for one of the most recognizable genres of the quilting art, a traditional stronghold of fine workmanship, clarity of color combination, and stunning simplicity of design and execution. This was a functional beauty, form following graciously after its likely intended first use for warmth.

I turned my attention to another treasure in the room: a little black book and old greeting-card box. The old vinyl of the tiny three-ring binder had hardened a bit and the edges of the blue-line sheets inside were brownish, a few dog-eared or torn. It was tightly crammed with notes of names and dates. In the small box were a couple dozen combinations of tiny bits of fabric and notes, stuck together with rusting straight pins. Each set of fabric was two or three pieces of the same basic color but in different shades or weight. Navy blue, dark green, brown, black, gray: They were each snippets of another woman’s Amish wedding dress, exchanged with another woman and kept as mementos. It was one woman’s treasure chest of memories and friendship.

It was as if the room was suddenly crowded with women in these dresses, smiling, talking and nodding as they sat around a quilt. Some were stitching, some were rocking babies, others showing a young girl how to make the fine stitches in the precise pattern chosen for that quilt. I felt a wave of goose bumps crawl up my arms.

Long before the doors of our new home opened on March 30, in a classroom on UNL’s East Campus I was having a “museum moment.” It hit the high points of a museum’s definition: An institution which collects, conserves, researches, exhibits and interprets objects of lasting interest or value for the purposes of study, education and enjoyment. Quilts are the perfect platform to serve these purposes for a wide variety of people.

Museum director Patricia Crews explains the use of the quilts in an analogy of a microscopic lens through which to look into the past: “Most women left few written records prior to the 20th century. Consequently, the objects they made are some of the best documents from which to glean insights into their lives.”

The study of such material culture is one role of a museum. The definition of that term varies. Jules David Prown, in his essay “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method” explains it so: Material culture is the study through artifacts of the beliefs—values, ideas, attitudes and assumptions—of a particular community or society at a given time.

Quilts are a “primary textbook” for this type of experiential learning, but not only in a historical framework. The quilts in our museum are simultaneously art, communication, decorative objects, even tools of previous owners. (Don’t even get me started on the snake bag from India!) There are, in fact, few similar types of artifacts that can cross the lines of craft, design, folk, decorative, art and history and link all together in one object so ubiquitous to everyday life. The quilts at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum come from many sources crossing all those areas. A growing number of contemporary artists are drawn to quilting as the medium for the expression of their art.

The Smithsonian Institute archives oral interviews with important American artists. In 2003 they came to the home of Michael James here in Lincoln, Neb. James is recognized internationally as a preeminent contemporary quilter. He was attracted to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to teach in the Department of Textiles, Clothing and Design and is now the chair of that department. (His surname is only coincidentally the same as the venter’s major donors, Robert and Ardis James.) In the interview conducted by David Lyon, Michael related one of the reasons he chose quilting as the medium for his art:

Lyon: “Could you talk a little bit about your view on the importance of fiber as a means of expression? I mean, you started out working as a painter, as a printmaker—you’ve done a lot of different things, but fiber is what you settled on.”

James: “I guess ubiquity is the word—of fabric, of textiles, and no other material is so closely connected to the human body. I think that essential quality is what gave me a rationale for adopting it as an expressive medium, because I felt that anything that was so closely connected, so necessary for human functioning, had value, a kind of essential value that to me legitimized it as an artist’s material, as a material at least with potential creative value. And it had always been used that way, historically.”

James, continued, addressing a common preconception that men did not quilt: “And so—I mean, I made peace with the notion of working with textiles as a medium a long time ago, early on, but I think that its problem has been that it’s been associated over the centuries with women’s work, and women’s work has been so devalued for so many centuries that that all played into the reasons why this medium could be marginalized as it was, and still is, actually, to some degree—less so now than it used to be, but still to some degree it is marginalized.”

Quilting has historically been designated a woman’s interest and, as many such interests have been, it has indeed been a marginalized art and historical form. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich stated, “Much of the social history of early America has been lost to us precisely because women were expected to use needles rather than pens. Yet if textiles are in one sense an emblem of women’s oppression, they have also been an almost universal medium of female expression.” Increased attention, credible acclaim, and gradual enlightenment of the world’s scholars and art critics and historians have moved the status of quilts to a higher point. We have seen steadily increasing interest in and respect for the art of quilting and the importance of quilts as historical objects since our establishment in 1997.

Museums follow passion. And quilting inspires passion. Thousands of visitors from all around the world crossed our threshold in the first six weeks since the museum opened. There is a strong feeling of pride and ownership expressed by many of the visitors to the museum. Two comments are common: “I just want to see more quilts” and “It’s about time.”

Time for what? Time to recognize the quilt-maker’s exquisitely intimate art form, the textile/tactile lure of designing, layering, adding nuance through intricate stitching, manipulation and creation of something new from something old. The synthesis of thousands of pieces into a stunning whole. The capturing of time, space and memory into pieces of cloth. All very personal, experiential descriptions of an ever-present element in our lives, quilts are everywhere. How we create and use them can define much about us.

The new museum is just the place for an immersion in this wonderful medium. Visitors will find expertly curated exhibitions, a technologically leading-edge virtual gallery offering numerous interactive experiences, and the opportunity to record their own quilt stories or observations. Visit the new home of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. You will never look at quilts in the same way again.

All photos in this article are courtesy of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum.

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