Handwork & Headwork: Quilts in America at 250
Joanne Shapp, Woolstone Hill Quilt, 2011. Cotton and wool, 96 x 82 in. Collection of Shelburne Museum, gift of Joanne Shapp in commemoration of the crop circle event at Woolstone Hill, Woolstone, Oxfordshire, UK. 2023-4. Photography by Andy Duback.
American quilts carry a range of meanings involving degrees of handwork and headwork. “Handwork” affords space for embodying and reimagining craft traditions in service of contemporary concerns. “Headwork” honors memory and tradition, as well as past and future material histories. Katie Wood Kirchhoff, the Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen Curator of American Decorative Arts, leads a conversation ranging from African American quiltmaker Harriet Powers and the U.S. Postal Service to the AIDS Memorial Quilt to Burlington’s own Lilian Baker Carlisle, highlighting projects that have employed this medium to commemorate and concretize a diverse range of American histories, from the 19th century to the present day.
Registration recommended. Free for Members or with Museum admission.