Touring Quilt House

Quilt: A multi-layered textile

Touring Quilt House

by Suzanne Smith Arney

The International Quilt Study Center & Museum (IQSCM), familiarly known as Quilt House, is itself a layered construction—and construct. Rooms open into others and viewers are tantalized throughout the center by architectural details and glimpses of galleries. Located at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Quilt House has become a mecca for quilt lovers from around the world.

The main galleries on the second floor are accessed by a wide stepped ramp following the curve of the glass façade. As one ascends, a view of the street-level entry and gift shop and the Dillow Conservation Work Room (where staff and volunteers can be seen examining items in the collection) gives way to the upper level’s reception hall. A graphic frieze of thumbnail images of quilts in the collection gradually comes into view over the galleries’ entryway. Architect Robert A. M. Stern sought a sense “of slowing down from the pace of the workaday.” This conceptualized layout and the galleries’ protective low lighting contribute to a sense of quiet attention to the quilts on display.

The Coryell, Center, and Gottsch Galleries comprise an open, flexible space for displays and ideas to flow, connect, inform, and inspire. These three side-by-side galleries converge onto a passageway leading to the expansive new West Gallery, which opened in June 2015 thanks to a very generous gift from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation. The Jameses gave the lead donation for Quilt House, which opened in 2008, and have donated more than 1,000 quilts from their personal collection. The new gallery, measuring 13,200 square feet, also includes a digital gallery and additional storage space. “This exciting new gallery, with its professional lighting, high ceilings, and open vistas balanced by more intimate enclaves, equals any space that I know of in New York City exhibiting textiles,” says Dr. Sandra Sider, Curator, Texas Quilt Museum, and a resident of New York since 1979.

The West Gallery is perfect for showing Luke Haynes’ installation of fifty 90-inch-square contemporary Log Cabin quilts. Inspired by a Donald Judd installation, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum,

left: Michael James

Elaborated Tangram

92 x 90 inches, 1976 IQSCM 1997.007.1012

below: Jean Ray Laury Barefoot and Pregnant

47 x 46 inches, 1987 IQSCM 2010.014.0005

1982-1986, Haynes chose the Log Cabin as a fundamental block pattern and limited his palette to black and white with the traditional red center. In his blog entry of January 18, 2016, Haynes explains, “The reason it’s alluding to Judd is the material and iteration, and to suggest that the show is objects in space and sculpture, removing the ‘quilt’ pre-conceptions of bed and private and valueless.”

Should you harbor any remnants of those preconceptions, the IQSCM will blow them away. From expressionist Radka Donnell, the museum’s first art quilt purchase, to Michael James (professor and chair of UNL’s Department of Textiles, Merchandising & Fashion Design), to Anne Fitts’s quilted car, the museum’s collection and exhibition of art quilts emphasizes the “art” and adds a necessary component to its goal of creating a “comprehensive collection of the highest quality quilts from all cultures, countries, and time periods.” Carolyn Ducey, Curator of Collections, says, “Art quilts are designated as a priority for collecting, along with international traditional pieces. We hope to see this area of the collection grow significantly in the next ten years.

Beginning or ending a visit to Quilt House with a stop in the Pumphrey Family Gallery, you may feel a special connection with the quilts shown in this intimate space. It is perfect for a mini-survey of Linda Colsh’s sensitive observations of life, embodied by a stranger glimpsed on a cobblestoned square in Belgium or a rock carried by a rushing snowmelt creek. Her exhibition’s title, Like Breath on Glass, is taken from a line by James McNeill Whistler. Colsh

says, “My work is about the transitory, the ephemeral. While Whistler was speaking about the technique of painting (my work is almost always painted), I found that I liked the imagery of his words very much: breath visible for an instant on the glass, then gone.

Thanks to the IQSCM, the incredible variety of quilts, their history, and their visual impact are documented, preserved, and available for study and sheer enjoyment. The many layers of quilts and quiltmaking invite exploration and inspire exciting new interpretations. Quilters, collectors, curators, educators, and aficionados will be able to explore Quilt House and its exhibitions during the joint SAQAIQSCM Symposium, “Creation to Curation,” April 27–April 30, 2017. The following exhibitions will be on view:

Log Cabins by Luke Haynes Jan. 27 – April 30, West Gallery

Quilt Japan: Selections from the 12th Quilt Nihon Exhibition Feb. 14 – May 21, Center and Lois Gottsch Galleries

Layered Voices, a juried exhibition of quilts from SAQA (March 31 – July 30), Peg Coryell Gallery

Like Breath on Glass: Studio Work by Linda Colsh April 11-July 9, West Gallery

Anna Von Mertens George Washington’s aura, after Gilbert Stuart

33 x 24 inches, 2009 IQSCM 2010.002.0002.

West gallery of the IQSCM