4/15/23 Saturday Lecture with Nancy Bavor
Saturday, 4/15/23 10am PT
Presented In-Person *and* Virtually via Zoom
Koret Auditorium, de Young museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
In-Person Tickets: $5, sold at the door only \ Free for TAC members
Virtual Tickets (Zoom): $5 Members of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Students. $10 General Admission \ Free for TAC members.
This presentation will trace the development of the art quilt in California, from the late 1960s through the third decade of the 21st century, and reflect on the future of the art form.
The American studio art quilt movement that emerged in the last quarter of the twentieth century had its primary origins in California and Ohio, and to a lesser degree, Massachusetts. The decades leading up to the emergence of art quilts in the 1960s portray a complex picture involving the intersection of art, craft, universities and the traditional American quilt. Three national cultural developments resulted in the reevaluation of quilts as a suitable art medium and increased artists’ awareness of quilts: the art museum’s legitimization of the quilt as art, the junction of art and craft at the university level, and social, political and fashion trends that brought quilts to national prominence. Compelling personal motivations also played a significant role in an individual’s choice to combine art practice with quilt making.
Examples of the artists’ work reflect the dual heritage of quilt and art history, one that blends quilt making techniques and implicit historic cultural associations with principles of contemporary art.
Nancy Bavor holds a Bachelors degree in art history from Northwestern University and a Masters degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in the History of Textiles/Quilt Studies emphasis. Her Masters thesis explores the origins and development of the art quilt in California. In 2018, she co-authored the book Art Quilts Unfolding: 50 Years of Innovation and co-curated the accompanying exhibition Layered & Stitched: Fifty Years of Innovative Art. Bavor has served on the boards of Studio Art Quilt Associates and the Quilt Alliance and currently serves on the board of the American Quilt Study Group and the Advisory Board of the International Quilt Museum. She is Director Emerita of the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles.
Image Credit:
Linda McDonald, Clear Palisades, 1987. 92 x 92”, cotton. Hand dyed, hand pieced and quilted.