I have a mixed opinion about this article.  At first,
I thought people questioning whether or not quilts
were actually art, rather insulting.  The amount of
time, technique skill and shear effort it takes to
produce even one twin size quilt surpasses many
painters considered to be of "high art" quality.  Just
creating the design and picking out the colors alone,
can be overwhelming!  But then I had to stop and
think.  See, I'm a quilter and I have gone to several
quilt shows and the work that is submitted to many of
these shows are absolutely amazing!  Yet, I do not see
these type of quilts in many of the museum shows I
have seen.  So maybe it is not the genera that is the
problem, but the museum profession's understanding of
what is an outstanding piece of quilt artwork.

Kim Dixon





--- Kimberly Kenney <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I saw this article through another list, and I
> wondered what you all thought about it.  I won't
> comment now, though I do have an opinion...
>
> Kim Kenney
> Curator
> McKinley Museum
>
> *********************************************
>
> "MUSEUMS COZY UP TO QUILTS"
>
> It's High Season for Blankets,
> But Patrons Ask: Is It Art?
> Competing with El Greco
>
> By BROOKS BARNES
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
> Museum curators have a lot to worry about in these
> tough times: attendance,
> security, damaged art.
> And now ... bedbugs?
>
> >From Colorado to Connecticut, some of the season's
> biggest blockbuster
> exhibits
> have nothing to do with van Gogh and Vermeer --
> they're all about quilts.
> Indeed, the kind of bedcovers that look like
> something
>
> from Aunt Edna's
> boudoir
> have made it to a surprising number of big-city
> museums, from "The Quilted
> Surface" in Columbus, Ohio, to "The Quilts of Gee's
> Bend," which will hit
> the
> Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Another museum on the
> tour -- New York's
> august
> Whitney Museum of American Art.
>
> But here's a question: Is it art? Curators and
> auctioneers are quick to
> point
> out that this is legitimate stuff, with its own
> masterworks and history.
> Plus,
> they say, quilts are great for attendance, pulling
> in
> a lot of people who
> wouldn't otherwise set foot in a museum. But many
> everyday museum-goers say
> they're surprised to see the usual fare replaced by
> beaux-arts blankies:
> This
> stuff's not art, they say -- it's crafts.
>
> Disappointing
>
> Kelly Howard, for one, made a recent trip to the UBS
> PaineWebber Art Gallery
> in
> Manhattan after friends raved about its exhibit of
> rare Tibetan artifacts.
> Instead, she found a show called "Six Continents of
> Quilts," which is set to
> appear in national and international museums for the
> next four years. "To be
> honest, I'm a little disappointed," the New York
> actress says. Two of the
> showpieces -- one with yellow police tape woven into
> it and another that
> incorporated computer circuitry -- did catch her
> eye.
> "I'm glad those two
> are
> hanging on a wall," she says, because they would
> "hurt
>
> somebody on a bed."
>
> This isn't the first time quilts have made the
> museum
> scene. The Whitney
> mounted the first major-museum quilt show back in
> 1971, and a Civil War-era
> quilt sold for $264,000 at Sotheby's in the in the
> mid-'90s. But in general,
> these pieces rarely made it beyond folk-art museums
> and the historic-homes
> circuit -- until now. Suddenly, quilts seem to be
> coming out all over, with
> eight big shows hitting art museums around the U.S.
> this year. The latest
> development: quilt subgenres. Indianapolis is
> cozying
> up to 50 food-related
> works, while Yale University Art Gallery is
> highlighting "Nine
> African-American
> Quilters."
>
> After all, adherents argue, if mosaics and collages
> are art, why not quilts?
> "They're highly refined objects that often address
> important historical
> themes," says Nancy Druckman, director of Sotheby's
> folk-art department.
> Also,
> the nation has 20 million quilters -- a hefty,
> built-in audience for any one
> of
> these displays.
>
> But there may be another, more prosaic reason for
> the
> quilt craze: These
> shows
> are cheap to mount. And museums need that,
> especially
> at a time when
> attendance
> is falling, outside funding is drying up and
> insurance
>
> costs are soaring.
> Insuring a quilt exhibition costs "peanuts" compared
> with even a modest
> painting or sculpture show, says Michele Twyman, who
> handles museums for
> Chubb
> insurance. Shipping's cheaper, too: While a large
> painting may cost $1,000
> to
> transport from Houston to New York, quilts of the
> same
>
> size can go for about
> $400. "They're a cinch compared to traditional
> artworks," says Jonathan
> Schwartz, president of Atelier 4, a New York
> art-shipping outfit.
>
> An Easy Sell
>
> Better still, quilts are an easy sell to finicky
> corporate sponsors who
> usually
> like uncontroversial art. Even Kenneth Lay, former
> chief executive of Enron,
> is
> a sponsor of "Gee's Bend." (The show features denim,
> corduroy and
> cotton-scrap
> quilts by African-American women in rural Alabama.)
> "Everybody wants a piece
> of
> it," says Shelly Zegart, the show's consulting
> curator. The Museum of Fine
> Arts, Houston expects the show to attract 110,000
> visitors during its 54-day
> run there -- on a par with the "Masterworks from El
> Greco to Picasso" show
> that
> will follow it.
>
> Still, some visitors hoping for Brancusi are
> disappointed to find batting.
> Dallas teacher Michelle Woodall was thinking about
> hitting the Houston
> museum
> as part of her junior high class's upcoming field
> trip
>
> to the Johnson Space
> Center. But when she saw the fall exhibition
> schedule,
>
> she nixed the plan.
> "Quilts that keep you warm, in an art museum?" she
> says. "I'd lose all my
> credibility."
>
> She may want to brace for more shows like it,
> though.
> Quilting is just one
> piece of a broader patchwork of fields that are
> gaining recognition in the
> art
> world. Glass, ceramics, clothing, even "fiber arts"
> (grass baskets) are
> showing
> up in big museums at a time when, coincidentally or
> not, budgets are at
> their
> tightest in a decade. The St. Louis Art Museum is
> showing "The Art of
> African
>
=== message truncated ===

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