Abstract Design in American Quilts: A Biography of an Exhibition

by Jonathan Holstein, Shelley Zegart (Foreword)

The exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City on 1 July 1971, and quilting has not been the same since. From this universally acknowledged seminal event dates the study of quilting as a serious art form and the tremendously important international cross-fertilization among art historians, textile scholars, and the artist-craftspeople who work in quilts. This important work is a personal statement of Jonathan Holstein's development as a pioneer quilting connoisseur, a guide to the quilts of the Whitney exhibition, and a study of the effects of the consequent explosion of attention to this art form.

Genres: Quilting, Art

230 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

Reviews

[Nann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a double-vintage experience: in 2024 reading a 1991 retrospective account of a 1971 museum exhibit. As quilters and quilt historians know, Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof put their collection of 19th and early 20th century quilts on view at the Whitney Museum. Quilts as art? Revolutionary! In 1991 Holstein wrote about how he came to collecting and the enduring influence of that 1971 event.

The collection is now at the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 2021 they exhibited the quilts for a 50th anniversary retrospective.

[Jean Carlton · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a quiltmaker, historian in the areas of textiles and women's history, quilt collector, and all around lover of all things quilt this was an interesting and thorough recounting of a seminal event in the quilt world - a quilt exhibit at an ART musuem..in NEW YORK CITY!!.
It was 1971, the Whitney agreed to an exhibit on American Quilts - chosen specifically for their aesthetics...their graphic design. Seeing these humble objects treated as art...hung on gallery walls instead of rumpled on a bed, took the world, literally, by surprise. The quilts from that exhibit each have their own full page and thorough description pointing out various characteristics that relate to ways 'fine' art is defined and judged.
The exhibit was so popular it went on to travel to Europe and all over the United States and was a turning point in the history of the quilt.