Frist Art Museum Unpacks the Fabric of American Identity in New Quilt Show
A textile-based testament to the comfort and complexity of national history.
Summary
- Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will be on view in Nashville from June 27 through October 12.
- Featuring nearly 50 quilts and coverlets from the MFA Boston’s textile collection, the exhibition explores the medium’s evolution and its unsung makers.
The humble quilt has long been a major player in folk art museums around the country, though in recent years it’s made its way into the more mainstream spotlight. Following this path, Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories, a forthcoming exhibition at Nashville’s Frist Art Museum, will present a nearly 50-piece quilt and coverlet showcase hailing from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, each its own immaculate patchwork of the personal and the political.
Spanning more than 300 years of U.S. history, the exhibit traces quilting’s evolution and threads this timeless art form into the broader story of American identity, stitch by stitch. From 18th-century heirlooms to works made as recently as 2021, the exhibition celebrates stories behind these textile relics alongside the medium’s unsung heroes and the voices too often left out of traditional art histories.
“Today, quilters have expanded the medium to encompass a wide range of techniques, materials and imagery,” says senior curator Katie Delmez. Once just a means of warmth, utility and craft, in the mid-19th century, quilting flourished into an art form of its own as makers began to identify more with textile art.
Now a powerful form of artistic and cultural expression, contemporary quiltmakers from all walks of life turn the the medium to reckon with today’s ideas and issues, such as racism and gun violence to immigration and Indigenous sovereignty. In this space, fabric becomes a soft but unflinching testimony to the complex visual, cultural and racial fabric of American life, and the myriad of stories that emerge.
Head to the Frist’s website for more information.
Frist Art Museum
919 Broadway,
Nashville, TN 37203
