Seven years ago I approached "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibition at Milwaukee Art Museum with a skeptical eye. Decorative arts has never been a passion of mine.
But the amazing textiles in that show really blew me away. So, why did I approach "American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection," on view now at MAM -- through Sept. 6 -- with skepticism?
In part because I know the Gee's Bend quilters were an exception, not a rule and because, well, decorative arts has never been a passion of mine.
But curators are passionate people and I'm always happy to let a passionate person riff on their passion for a while. That's the most rewarding part of my job, really. Letting people who are excited and excitable about something share that enthusiasm. It's refreshing.
So it was that this morning Milwaukee Art Museum curator Mel Buchanan led me on a five-to-ten-minute tour of the quilt show that turned into more than half an hour without us even noticing.
The more than 40 quilts in the traveling show are drawn from the collection of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. And they are often-intricate works woven into the patchwork of American history.
While some are overtly tied to American politics (like the one with presidential portraits), others open more subtle windows into changes in American history, commerce and society.
"The (Winterthur) is Mecca for decorative arts historians," Buchanan tells me as we enter the Baker/Rowland Galleries. She is clearly a fan of the Winterthur's Linda Eaton, who put together this show.
"She is really one of the foremost experts on American quilts. And she has this really important collection in terms of survival and rarity of materials to work with. She put together the show and we recognized that if we were going to do a quilt show, this is the one, this is the rare materials, these are the important materials that connect to not only great makers but to great American history. It has a little bit of everything here."
While the Gee's Bend quilts came from the skilled hands of hard-working people who used whatever they could get their hands on to make their quilts, these quilts were made by women of means and so the materials are often much more luxuriant: from mass produced English patterned textiles to hundreds of pieces of imported dress silk.
"Each of these quilts has a story makers and families and the context in which it was made, how it was passed through, and the design itself," says Buchanan.
"What's spectacular about these quilts is their age. It's a beautiful piece of abstract art, it's full of color, it's bright. Then we remind ourselves, that's from 1827," she says, pointing to one of the first works in the exhibition, Rebecca Scattergood Savery's pieced quilt. "It's a great survival story."
The AIDS Memorial Quilt
Now is a great time to check out the quilts show, too, because in the long Schroeder Galleria, which runs the length of the Quadracci Pavilion, nine panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt are on view until June 20.
The colorful memorial panels include contributions from 30 fashion designers, including Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Ralph Lauren, Isaac Mizrahi, and Oscar de la Renta.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
