2025-2026 Exhibition Season: Quilting Connections
In Care Of: Postcard-Sized Portrayals of Caregiving in Wisconsin
Nancy Nicholas Hall main lobby
April 30 – November 9, 2025
Caring for loved ones can be hard and beautiful at the same time. In this exhibit, we elevate caregiver voices to shed light on their care experiences. We invited caregivers to anonymously share postcard-sized depictions of the joys and challenges that come with family caregiving. The exhibit documents the themes revealed in their words, educating viewers about caregiving and catalyzing awareness and conversation about this often invisible population.
Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape
Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery
September 3, 2025 – May 10, 2026
Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape explores the parallel processes of quilt making within the American home and placemaking 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 surrounding 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.
Find Your Quilt
Ruth Davis Design Gallery
October 8, 2025 – March 1, 2026
This exhibition invites you to Find Your Quilt. A quilt can be artistic and designed, scientific and mathematical, political and personal. Quilts offer windows into the past, or hopes for the future. Find Your Quilt celebrates this diversity by displaying a bold and vibrant selection of historic quilts from around the world, drawn from the rich holdings of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, alongside innovative contemporary quilts, some made for this exhibition. Intended for the quilt-enthusiast, the quilt-curious, and the quilt-skeptic alike, Find Your Quilt explores how we define—and continually redefine—what quilts are, have been, and could be.
Design Studies MFA Exhibitions
Ruth Davis Design Gallery
March 18 – 29, 2026
Information forthcoming.
Textiles and Fashion Design Student Exhibition
Ruth Davis Design Gallery
April 22 – May 10, 2026
Information forthcoming.
Bring your class/group to the textiles and fashion exhibition