Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape explores the parallel processes of quilt-making within the American home and place-making on the American landscape. Featuring nineteenth- and twentieth-century American quilts drawn from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, the exhibit examines some of the most familiar quilt forms – such as nine-patch squares, eight-pointed stars, and “log cabin” blocks with cloth strips radiating outward from a central square “hearth”– as the basis for individual creativity and innovative design. Visitors will be encouraged to view American quilts through a new lens, by comparing these geometric motifs and strong linear compositions to the boundaries, pathways, and structures of the built environment.
At the same time, abstracted representations of the natural world will remind the audience of the varied knowledge systems through which Americans made sense of their environment. These quilted motifs not only evoked the American landscape, but circulated through it, by means of individual teachers, printed instructions and patterns, and the objects themselves, across generations and among cultural groups. The exhibit will also provide a timely opportunity to consider the place of textiles in American history and culture – as a form of creative expression, a site of cultural exchange, and a basis of the political economy – as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.
Support for this exhibition comes from the Anonymous Fund.
Related Programs:
October 16, 5pm – 7pm: Fall Exhibition Celebration
October 18, 8am – 6pm: Quilt Exhibitions Bus Tour
November 15, 10am – 5pm: Quilt Documentation Day
