January 20, 2024 - September 15, 2024 | Textile Gallery
Quilting has always been a means of creative expression, uniting color and pattern to form an object of purpose. Just as paint on canvas functions, the fabric pieces work as practical art, stitched together to form beautiful abstract creations. The impression of quilts as simple craft or “women’s work,” began to shift in the early 1970s. The 20th century modern art movements had changed the perception of textile art, and quilts were no longer viewed as simply bed coverings designed for warmth, but as art in their own right.
(left) Scrap Quilt, 1934 (right) Untitled (Abstract) by Sallie Frost Knerr, ca. 1970s
Today, the work is divided into categories: traditional quilts that are functional and follow historic patterns, art quilts designed as wall hangings for decoration, and modern quilts created from newly invented patterns that may serve as blanket, decor, or both. Despite these relatively recent distinctions, creativity has never been limited by theory.
The Charleston Museum’s 180+ historic quilt collection includes many examples of scrap quilts, crazy quilts, and quilts in traditional patterns executed with abstract coloring. Presented alongside modern works from the Gibbes Museum of Art, including paintings by Robert Rauschenberg and Sallie Frost Knerr, these quilts showcase the creativity and ingenuity of their makers. Enter the exhibit to see how they approached color, texture, and stitchwork with the same painterly expressiveness found in modern art.
“If modernism be a vital thing it must needs have roots in the past and be an essential expression of humanity: in short, it can only be a tradition.”
In the Museum’s Armory, see excellent examples of historic weaponry, dating from 1750 to the twentieth century, with uses that ranged from military to more personal applications such as hunting and dueling.
In the Historic Textiles Gallery, the Museum features regularly rotating exhibits from its rich historic textiles and clothing collection, one of the finest in the southeastern United States.
In The Charleston Museum: The Early Days gallery, see exotic collections from around the world, representative of the Museum’s nineteenth century cosmopolitan collecting focus.
In the Lowcountry History Hall, see materials relating to the Native Americans who first inhabited the Lowcountry and the African American and European settlers who transformed the region into an agricultural empire.
In the Natural History gallery you will see an extraordinary array of birds, reptiles and mammals that have called the South Carolina Lowcountry home since prehistory, including contributions from noted naturalists.
The Charleston Museum is pleased to present Kidstory, a fun and exciting, hands-on exhibit for children, where the fascinating history of Charleston and the Lowcountry comes alive.
In the Loeblein Gallery of Charleston Silver discover the impressive work of the South’s finest craftsmen and women, from the colonial era through the Victorian Age.
(left) Scrap Quilt, 1934
