A Stitch In Time: Images Of Needleworking

The exhibition complements the featured exhibition Quilts in a Material World: Selections from the Winterthur Collection, on view through May 26 in the Museum's Main Exhibition Galleries.

Featuring works by such artists as Childe Hassam and Jean François Millet, this exhibition demonstrates a pronounced interest in the production of handmade crafts during the mid-19th century's rise of industrial manufacturing in Europe and America. Artists who depicted needleworking as an occupation for the working classes portrayed the craft with reverence and quiet dignity.

By the late 19th century, needleworking was portrayed nostalgically as a rustic form of labor that was fast disappearing, but it was also promoted as a craft pastime for the middle and upper classes. Women were encouraged to give direction to their artistic talents, and the domestic interiors that they occupied were often represented as spaces of peacefulness and harmony. Many artists used their wives and immediate family members as models for their artwork, showing the women intently absorbed in their activities.

Curated by Eric Lutz, assistant curator of prints, drawings and photographs, A Stitch in Time: Images of Needleworking, 1850–1920 will be on view in Gallery 321 through June 8, 2008. -- www.stlouis.art.museum