'Quilts of Gee’s Bend' at Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale

Tuesday, 14 August 2007 00:52

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – The Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale will host a major exhibition celebrating the multi-generational artistry of African American women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama from September 7, 2007 through January 7, 2008 with The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida. Along with the exhibition, the Museum will host 16 of the quilters in a residency during the opening weekend September 6-9, providing inspiration, history and education in an extraordinary cultural experience. These women and their ancestors, isolated for decades by geography, outside indifference, and extreme poverty but in lives rich with family, faith, and community, have quietly created one of the most astonishingly beautiful and original bodies of art work.

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend exhibitions have received international acclaim at art museums throughout the United States including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Whitney Museum in New York. The Quilts of Gee’s Bend features sixty-three quilts by forty-six quilters. This tradition of quiltmaking in Gee’s Bend goes back many generations; the remarkable quilts have survived from the 1920s to the present. Improvisational designs, asymmetry, multiple patterns, and an almost minimalist aesthetic characterize the Gee’s Bend quilts. While they are based on conventional quilting techniques and approaches, Gee’s Bend quilt designs are often likened to abstract modern painting, and bear little resemblance to familiar quilt patterns such as wedding rings and rising suns.

“The quilts are evidence of a great American success story. Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is a community that has suffered through slavery, sharecropping, and the depression, but has found deliverance through their art. Out of the isolation of Gee’s Bend come quilts which by no means are stereotypical designs. Here we have that which is utilitarian made into an art of masterful abstractions,” says Irvin M. Lippman, resident and executive director of the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale.

 The quilts are grouped as Work Clothes, My Way, Patterns, Housetop, Triangles, and Corduroy. Made for the practical purpose of warmth, the shapes and colors of these quilts pulsate with a disciplined beauty that is rooted in both symmetry and a conscious decision to deviate from that order. As with all great works of art, these quilts are both traditional and revolutionary.

The area known as Gee’s Bend occupies the land some five miles across and seven miles deep inside a horseshoe-shaped bend in the Alabama River. Geography has defined life in Gee’s Bend over several generations. The first African Americans to settle in the area were the slaves of Joseph Gee, for whom the Bend is named. Cut off on three sides from the outside world by the Alabama River, a ferry operated sporadically until the 1960s. But whites in the area stopped the ferry when Benders became active in the Civil Rights Movement. Today, the ferry has recently resumed service across the Alabama River. What nature created at the Bend, history has reinforced.

Isolation is only half the story of Gee’s Bend; the other half is tradition. Because the inhabitants of Gee’s Bend were left largely to themselves for nearly one hundred years after the end of the Civil War in 1865, many of the community’s traditions and folkways survived virtually unchanged well into the 20th century. Quilting is one of the most important of these traditions.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, along with other Gee’s Bend quilts, rugs, and products inspired by the quilters will be available in the Museum Store and online. The 190-page catalogue is illustrated with the quilts featured in the exhibition and photographs of Gee’s Bend. It provides a historical overview of the community, its people, and their art-making style. The publication features essays by renowned curators in the field and the collectors of these important artifacts, and will be available in hardcover at the Museum Store. For more information, call 954.525.5500, ext. 255.

Arnett Family and Tinwood Alliance, Inc.
The Quilts of Gee’s Bend is curated for the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale by William Arnett and Matthew Arnett and was organized by Tinwood Alliance, Inc. The exhibition was originally curated by William Arnett, Alvia Wardlaw, John Beardsley, and Jane Livingston. The Arnett family and Tinwood Alliance, Inc. seek to preserve the creative integrity of the sources from which indigenous American art forms originate and to educate the public about African American vernacular art, artists, and cultural traditions .

Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale
The Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale is open daily 11am – 7pm and closed on Tuesdays and select national holidays. Located on the northeast corner of Las Olas Boulevard and Andrews Avenue, it is in the heart of downtown Fort Lauderdale’s Riverwalk Arts and Entertainment District.

This exhibition has been made possible by a generous donation from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida. Funding for the Museum is provided in part by the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional annual support provided by JM Family Enterprises, the Sansom Foundation, and David Horovitz and Francie Bishop Good, among others. Visit Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale at : www.moafl.org