Closing weekend of American Quilts; Museum open Labor Day 10-5
Last Chance to see American Quilts at Milwaukee Art Museum
Milwaukee, Wis. – Sept. 2, 2010 –American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection will end its highly successful run at the Milwaukee Art Museum on Monday, September 6. The popular exhibition tells of romance, religion, and politics from early American life (1760–1850) through exquisite works of hand-stitched art.
American Quilts features more than 40 exquisite quilts whose fabric, design, and stitching combine to provide an extraordinary visual experience. These works of art also present a wealth of new information about the lives of their makers and the world around them. Quilts make political statements, celebrate marriages, and document the early global textile trade. Close examination of these quilts show the frugal recycling of a pair of men’s wool breeches and the special purchase of fashionable and expensive fabrics used in their creation. The exhibition includes some of the finest and earliest American printed textiles, a quilted Indian palampore, and a kaleidoscopic sunburst quilt featuring over 6,700 pieces of printed cotton.
“American Quilts explores how quilts were made to commemorate life-changing events for individuals, families, or entire communities,” said Mel Buchanan, Mae E. Demmer Assistant Curator of 20th-century Design at the Museum. “The rare quilts on view were passed through generations and, in turn, have become beautiful repositories of history and memory that document women’s political, social, and cultural lives in the early American republic.”
The Museum is open Labor Day, Monday, September 6, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection is sponsored at the Milwaukee Art Museum by the Museum’s Friends of Art. The exhibition is organized by Winterthur Museum & Country Estate. The exhibition is curated by Linda Eaton of Winterthur Museum and organized at the Milwaukee Art Museum by Mel Buchanan, Liz Flaig, and Catherine Sawinski.
HOURS AND ADMISSION
The Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults and $10 for students, seniors and active military, and is free for Members and children 12 and under.
Starting September 2, admission is free for all visitors to the Museum on the first Thursday of each month, sponsored by Target. Known as Target Free First Thursdays, this program replaces Milwaukee County Resident Free Day on Wednesdays and does not apply to group tours.
ABOUT THE MUSEUM
The Milwaukee Art Museum’s far-reaching holdings include more than 20,000 works spanning antiquity to the present day. With a history dating back to 1888, the Museum houses a collection with strengths in 19th- and 20th-century American and European art, contemporary art, American decorative arts, and folk and self-taught art. The Museum includes the Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion, named by Time magazine as “Best Design of 2001.” For more information, please visit www.mam.org.
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