This new BAMPFA exhibit explores the art and history of African American quilts

There is something immediately familiar and accessible about a quilt; for many of us, quilts are part of the landscape of home. That’s also why they are powerful as art objects — they are at once utilitarian, expressive, fanciful and intimate. 

Those dual functions come together in BAMPFA’s latest exhibition, Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California. Featuring the work of more than 80 Black artists, Routed West chronicles how quilt making played a part in the Second Great Migration, as millions of Black Americans fled the South’s oppressive racial landscape from 1940 to 1970. 

“The storytelling and the insight into history that we now have through these objects is really extraordinary,” says BAMPFA curator Elaine Yau in this 101 in 101 video, which challenges Berkeley’s experts to condense their field of study into 101 seconds.  “So many of these men and women were of the migrant generation who left the South during Jim Crow, also during World War II. Now we have this ability to tell this part of history — and how so much of Bay Area culture is inflected with Black Southern culture.”

A dozen of the featured quiltmakers are part of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, a multi-generational group that offers its members community and skill-sharing, as well as opportunities to exhibit their work. Other quilts on view come from a selection from a unique collection of nearly 3,000 African American quilts — the largest single such assemblage — that was created at BAMPFA after a bequest in 2019. Supported by BAMPFA’s curatorial associate Matthew Villar Miranda, Yau has worked to assemble this exhibition for nearly five years.

What emerges from the collection’s carefully catalogued grey archival boxes, unfurled in brilliant color on the museum’s walls, is resonant with personal histories. The quilts display every color in the rainbow, in palettes ranging from vivid and contrasting to subtle variations created of mixed patterns and prints. The stories of the people behind the quilts jump out at you in bold shapes and tiny details — stories of resilience, of family, of protest, and much more.

“[Quilts] live with people in their everyday lives,” says Yau, “and they represent people and feelings that are so deeply personal –– that is what makes them really special.”

Watch the whole video to learn more about the Routed West exhibition at BAMPFA.

Watch more 101 in 101 videos featuring UC Berkeley faculty and experts here.