Exhibition Status: Fully Booked

Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts

Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts

Quilts are a narrative art; with themes that are political, spiritual, communal, or commemorative, they are infused with history and memory, mapping out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design. Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts is an invitation to read quilts as maps, tracing the paths of individual histories that illuminate larger historic events and cultural trends.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this insightful and engaging exhibition brings together 18 quilts from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, representing a range of materials, motifs, and techniques—from traditional early-American quilts to more contemporary sculptural assemblages. The quilts in Handstitched Worlds show us how this too-often overlooked medium balances creativity with tradition, individuality with collective zeitgeist. Like a roadmap, these unique works offer a path to a deeper understanding of the American cultural fabric.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art

Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art

Curious and captivating, the over eighty carvings, sculptures, textiles, and regalia revealed in Mystery and Benevolence: Masonic and Odd Fellows Folk Art bring to light the histories, symbolism, and values of the Freemasons and the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows—two fraternal brotherhoods with deep roots in American history. Through arcane and alluring artifacts such as grave markers, serpent-headed staffs, richly embroidered textiles, and ceremonial regalia, Mystery and Benevolence transports us to  the “golden age” of American secret societies, when folk art and decorative art were brought together to confer a sense of legacy, status, and belonging in a newly established country.

Although we may know the mission and values of the Freemasons and Odd Fellows, we still find ourselves asking, “Why were they created, and why do they endure?” The enigmatic objects on view assume a profound and affecting sincerity, even as their highly-charged imagery fascinates, puzzles, and compels.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.

Memories & Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art

Memories and Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art

“Our goal is to preserve cultural memories and provide the community with a source of inspiration.”

– Kerry Davis, Collector

“In their rapture of appreciating the courageous acts of visual artists, Kerry and C. Betty Davis have created a cultural oasis in which their community can recognize, inform and celebrate themselves.”

– Tina Dunkley, former Clark Atlanta University museum director

Memories and Inspiration: The Kerry and C. Betty Davis Collection of African American Art presents sixty-seven selected works from a body of art amassed over thirty-five years. Kerry, a retired mailman, and Betty, a former television news producer, have foregone many comforts to live with drawings, paintings, prints, and sculpture as their principal luxuries.  Their collection includes works by Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Ernest T. Crichlow, Sam Gilliam, Loïs Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Gordon Parks, and Alma Thomas, but Kerry and Betty do not search exclusively for well-known and/or documented artists. Rather, they focus on “the importance of gathering and preserving a spectrum of approaches to the black image in order to console the psyche and contribute to a more authentic articulation of the self.”

The result is an eclectic gathering of works crossing different mediums, subjects, and styles by a group of artists of the African Diaspora who—in terms of training, experience, and expression—are strikingly diverse but unified in their use of cultural and historical narratives.  As their collection has grown, so has the Davises’ storehouse of memories of discovering new works of art, building friendships with artists, and conversing with museum professionals and other collectors in their home. They have also continued to expose their collection to family, friends, and church members who, while receptive to the fine arts, are unlikely to visit such local institutions as the High Museum of Art in Atlanta—prompting the artist Leon Nathaniel Hicks to refer to their residence as “a museum in a home.” Memories and Inspiration brings together an awe-inspiring selection of works, but it is their personal resonance—their connection to the Davises’ hopes, passions, and everyday lives—that gives the collection its unique power.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.