These quilts aren’t made for sleeping
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Version 0 of 1. When the Baltimore Museum of Art put out the call for art donations to coincide with the museum’s 100th anniversary last year, the public responded with thousands of objects. So many in fact that the museum is using several exhibitions to show off the new pieces. The latest, opening Tuesday, shows an array of art quilts — late-20th-century works that are designed to be displayed on walls, not beds, and that break the rules of a process that goes back to the days of the pharaohs. Organized by Anita Jones, the museum’s curator of textiles, the works’ bold strokes tend to wake up viewers rather than warm them to sleep. Here’s a look at the show by the numbers: Recently acquired quilts from the late 20th century featured in the Baltimore Museum of Art exhibition. Span of years represented by the works in “New Arrivals: Art Quilts” — 1980 to 1991. Percentage of artists in the art quilt show who are men. Year that Michael James, considered a foremost proponent of the art quilt, switched from painting and printmaking to quilts. Now chairman of the textile department at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, the home of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, James is represented here by his 1983 work “Metamorphosis.” Artists involved in “Marsh Island,” a 1986 triptych by Maine artists Gayle Fraas and Duncan Slade that features plywood panels surrounding painted and quilted cloth insets. Title of Texas artist Pamela Studstill’s fancifully pieced and painted quilt from 1988, which is accompanied by the original commission drawing and fabric swatches. Age, at his death, of M.C. Escher, whose eye-teasing geometric work influenced Adrien Rothschild’s 1991 “Purple Mountains.” Quilts in the exhibition that are connected to Baltimore. Rothschild, now based in Pennsylvania, used to live in Baltimore; the late Elizabeth Scott, represented by the 1980 work “Plantation,” lived in the city’s Sandton-Winchester neighborhood. Age of quilter Elizabeth Scott when she died at her home in the Penn North section of west Baltimore in 2011. Approximate number of objects obtained in the past decade in the Campaign for Art, marking the Baltimore Museum of Art’s centenary last year. Exhibits that will celebrate the museum’s successful Campaign for Art; this is the fifth. Length, in months, of the show “New Arrivals: Art Quilts” at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Weeks since the closing on Nov. 29 of the last quilt exhibition at the museum, “American Crazy Quilts” from the late 1880s. Cost of attending the Baltimore Museum of Art. Catlin is a freelance writer. New Arrivals: Art Quilts Tuesday through June 19 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Dr., Baltimore. 443-573-1700.artbma.org. Free. |