Textile arts—one of the most varied and inventive of the visual arts—has a long and illustrious history in the US. And the American Folk Art Museum has a long and illustrious history of making sure that the best examples of those forms are both preserved and presented.  

Last year, What That Quilt Knows About Me offered an immersive display of 19th-, 20th- and even 21st-century textiles made by free and enslaved people, including a British soldier, a German tailor and an Amish farm woman reminded us that bold, undiluted color goes back a ways in the American visual vocabulary. Shown here is a bedcover from 1853 made by Sarah “Sallie” Ann Garges of Doylestown, Pa. In embroidery and appliqué on a blazing orange ground, it accounts for many of the laborers, buildings, animals and plants that were central to farm life.

Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at DART,

Peggy