As this Hyperallergic journal article states:
"In recent years, fiber art has exploded in popularity, and museums have followed suit with a refreshing crop of exhibitions. But while museums display contemporary artists who incorporate domestic textiles as raw materials into their work, thousands of handmade quilts and laces languish in their storage facilities. When will art institutions begin to pay respect to the legacies of our foremothers’ artistry? And when will we, as a culture, move beyond rigid hierarchies of value and celebrate domestic crafts in their own right?"
It also states that "Institutions genuinely seeking to preserve the stories of domestic linens should take inspiration from projects like ... The Quilt Index, a digital humanities project based at Michigan State University, has amassed an online repository of thousands of photographs of quilts and maker stories."
Focusing on the Quilt Index specifically, this is a resource that could be of interest not only due to artistic merit, but as an archive of social history and culture. The photographs section of the Ephemera Pages are particularly interesting. The quilts in the photographs are worth seeing, but the people, and events where the quilts are being shown are also quite interesting. As are the biographies of the artists themselves. And, of course, the essays are note-worthy.
Worth a look of you have an interest in folk art, craft, social movements and culture.
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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