Standing on opposite sides of a roughly 9-by-12-foot table in a work room at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Collection Specialist Laura Hansen wears gloves. Joining to assist Curator Elaine Yau, they work as a team to display, fold, lift away and gently store each of five quilts with infinite care.
Preserving the quilts requires stringent procedures involving oxygen removal, antiseptic cleaning and six-month incubation periods to discover any possible mold spores, insects or skin oils. The quilts, bundled back into acid-free paper and boxes after the viewing, are among 100 from 80 artists soon to be included in “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California.”
The exhibit from June 8 through Nov. 30 at UC Berkeley’s BAMPFA collectively chronicles the history, lives and quiltmaking traditions of the millions of African Americans who moved from the southern United States to California and elsewhere from 1940 to 1970 during what historians call the Second Great Migration. The period had Black diaspora quiltmakers bringing century-old practices with them along with family stories preserved in the quilts and artifacts they carried. Creating new work upon establishing homes in the state, the artists preserved ancestral knowledge and memories, passing them forward to following generations.
“Routed West” is part of BAMPFA’s multiyear project to research, preserve, catalogue, hold and include in exhibits the nearly 3,000 quilts and artifacts received in 2019 from the estate of Eli Leon. A portion of the Oakland psychotherapist’s collection resulted in the “Rosie Lee Tompkins Retrospective” that featured the Bay-Area-based artist’s work and opened at BAMPFA in February 2020.
Importantly, this year’s exhibit expands the art form’s visibility and geographic range with quilts made in the South before 1950, in California after 1945 and, in the final section, works by living quilters based in the Bay Area, including members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland. Yau says in an interview that while researching the quilts, the role of the quilt-keeper took on profound, surprising significance.
“Because of their role in the physical survival of the quilts, there’s family continuity that is accessible. Without a keeper, who knows? We’d certainly have less insight Into who the quilters were, the materials they used, their practices, their lives.”
For an art museum that tells stories about objects, Yau finds the narratives woven into details of an abstract piece of art as dynamic components. Insight can come from a maker’s sewing skills; approach to materials and design; and more.
“Any detail can be a meaningful connection to the past and an individual,” she says.
Quilter Alice Neal was born in Louisiana and came to Oakland in the 1940s. Her “Mary Bright Commemorative Quilt” is one of the show’s few figurative quilts. Most others are centered on traditional patterns or improvisational piecing. Honoring her mother, whose image appears clothed in a brown-with-white polka dot dress with lace trim and wearing a simple black hat, it has birth and death years (1874 to 1954), features that highlight her exceptional sewing skills, and bordering with 13-link chains that represent her 13 family members.
“Every block constructed, the stitching used, is so intentionally included to incorporate her mother’s life and her family,” says Yau. “Eli Leon recorded an oral history with (Neal). From that we know it was created for a family history museum they wanted to establish on land in and around Bright’s home in Louisiana.”
The museum was never built, but the quilt preserved by Leon is a public testament to land ownership and cultural and family survival.
Gerstine Scott’s serpentine “Untitled (Necktie quilt),” made in Oakland in 1989, involves little cutting. Entire neckties are repurposed in ways that amplify curves and edges that bow outwardly into broader planes. Yau was able to connect with Scott’s son, who was profoundly moved that his mother’s memory is now preserved in a museum.
“In researching, we also learned from Scott’s neighbor in Oakland that her husband had donated some of the neckties used.”
Oklahoma-born Susan Pless’s abstract “Untitled (Strip)” may remind people of the Gees Bend quilts. Rectangles of various dimensions with rich, deep colors are easy to describe, but digging through census records for attribution and archival records proved immensely challenging.
“The spelling of her last name was inconsistent. I have to acknowledge her granddaughter, Gracell Tate, of Fresno, the quiltkeeper,” says Yau. “Without her story, all we’d have is abstract piecing. The meaningful story that came out from the outlines of her grandmother’s movements tell of survival. Even with scant details, it’s exciting to me to have them.”
Another example of the exhibition’s extraordinary storytelling is the presentation of Willa Eta Graham’s “Untitled,” a quilt created in the 1980s that is a modification of a traditional basket weave pattern, along with a quilt made by Lucinda Bellinger, Graham’s grandmother.
Preserved by Graham until it was purchased by Leon, Yau suggested generational memory in the older work is rendered immortal and universal. Unique as displayed in an art museum without significant restoration or “repairs” having been undertaken, the colors in areas are faded; the cotton fabric bears stains from use; and aging threads and edging are torn or loose.
“We know it was lived in, lived with,” says Yau.
This causes consideration of how these quilts embody a profound paradox. Originally and most often created to cover up and provide useful comfort to human bodies; the quilts as artwork are all about revealing. “Routed West” quilts tell multigenerational stories of love, pain, displacement, family history, cultural traditions embedded in communities and the diversity of Americans.
BAMPFA, having felt the impact of President Donald Trump’s recent executive order cutting already established federal grants to cultural institutions, Yau says the revocation of about $230,000 in unspent funds is “disappointing and infuriating.” She says the disconnect between cuts and the museum’s mission to hold and preserve the quilts is astonishing, but won’t change her or the museum’s purpose.
“While investigating our legal rights to contest the determination, we’re preserving the stories of individual artists, families and communities. That vision has only been clarified and affirmed while organizing this exhibition. We will continue to pursue alternatives for funding to continue the work.”
BAMPFA is at 2155 Center St. in Berkeley. For more details about its upcoming exhibit, visit bampfa.org/program/routed-west online.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.