An Advanced Look At Gee’s Bend

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, an exhibition taking a fresh look at the quilting tradition in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and introducing new artists and new motifs in works ranging from the early 20th century through 2005.

The exhibition examines the resurgence of interest in quilting in the Gee’s Bend community, presenting newly discovered quilts from the 1930s to the 1980s along with more recent work by established quilters and the younger generation they have inspired. It documents the development of key quilt patterns—housetop, courthouse steps, flying geese, and strip quilting—through outstanding examples. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta, the exhibition is accompanied by a publication by Bernard Herman of the University of Delaware, and includes an essay by Dilys Blum, Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

“While the art of these remarkable women is clearly informed by their particular geographic and cultural coordinates, their creative command of materials and design connects them to larger movements in contemporary American art,” Curator of Costume and Textile Dilys Blum remarked. In his catalogue essay, Herman compares the works in the exhibition to the structured compositions of Piet Mondrian and Esther Mahlangu, a Ndebele house painter from South Africa.

The 65 quilts in the exhibition, all of which are shown for the first time, will demonstrate how the quilters play upon the structure or "architecture" of the quilt to create a work of art that is based upon a traditional quilt pattern while simultaneously creating a visual vocabulary that is stylistically identifiable as Gee’s Bend. Each pattern is examined with visual examples detailing various interpretations. New works by granddaughters and great-granddaughters of master quilt makers will be shown, along with quilts from the early and mid-20th century.

The exhibition will be on view from August 2 to October 2, 2008. -- www.philamuseum.org

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