Feature: MSU Museum Quilts Travel to Japan
The MSU Museum’s fabulous quilt collection makes a fabulous debut in Japan, exemplifying its new international outreach efforts.
For the first time ever, MSU Museum collections are being exhibited overseas with "American Quilts from the Michigan State University Museum," which opened in Tokyo, Japan, earlier this year.
Leading up to this landmark international debut, the museum's quilt-related research, collection, and education activities have grown substantially. The museum has become an important institution in the preservation of quilts and quilt ephemera, as well as a leader in the development of innovative programs to make the collections and resources more widely available for educational and research use.
"American Quilts" reflects the MSU Museum's commitment to international outreach, explains Marsha MacDowell, curator of folk arts at the MSU Museum and the exhibit's organizer. "This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to make our extraordinary collections more accessible to users throughout the world and to use the collections to foster transnational understanding and appreciation of distinct cultural histories and expressions," she says.
The exhibition draws from 60 quilts from the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center, which houses a collection of more than 500 historic and contemporary quilts. "American Quilts from the Michigan State University Museum" is sponsored by Kokusai Art of Tokyo, one of Japan's leading developers of exhibitions. The MSU Museum joins a select set of institutions whose noted American quilt collections have been showcased in Japan by Kokusai, including the Maryland Historical Society and the University of Kansas Sheldon Art Museum. In each case, Kokusai publishes an accompanying exhibition catalogue in Japanese and English.
From Toyko, "American Quilts from the Michigan State University Museum" travel to Osaka, Niigata and Kyoto through December. Special receptions for MSU alumni in Japan are being planned throughout the exhibition schedule.
TEXTILES AS DOCUMENTS OF HISTORY
Since its founding in 1857, the Michigan State University Museum has become a public steward of many outstanding collections that serve as critical resources for teaching and research, and an active center for individuals engaged in research and teaching around the globe.
The quilts in the museum's collections are not only art objects appreciated for their beauty and craftsmanship, but they are also documents of history, explains Marsha MacDowell, who is also a professor of art and art history in MSU's College of Arts and Letters. "Through studying quilts and the stories of their makers and users, we can learn much about the history and traditions of families, artists, and communities," says MacDowell.
"The Michigan State University Museum has had a long-standing commitment to preserve and present the history of traditional arts in general and quilt history in particular," she notes. "The Michigan Quilt Project, begun at the museum in 1984, not only spearheaded the documentation of the state's quilting history, but also stimulated interest in strengthening the museum's quilt collection, upgrading its care and expanding its use."
The MSU Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center has evolved from the museum's strong interest in quilts.In 1952, the first quilts were accessioned into the MSU Museum's collections when the museum acquired the entire contents of another museum that was dismantled. Built primarily through donations from collectors and quilters and augmented by a small acquisition fund, the museum quilt collection now includes examples of significant historical and contemporary quilts. The quilt collections are housed in a state-of-the-art, rolled-storage system in the museum's collections center. Full and part-time curatorial and collection management staff members supervise the daily care and special uses of the collections.
In 2001 the museum and the Great Lakes Quilt Center became formally affiliated with the Alliance for American Quilts as one of three Regional Centers for the Quilt in the United States (the others are at University of Texas-Austin and University of Delaware). The Alliance is a national organization established "to further the recognition of quilts; to preserve the history of quilts and quilt-makers; and to establish the Center for the Quilt, a place that actively communicates with people about quilts and quilting." Many of the museum's quilt-related activities are also supported through a statewide partnership program with the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs with additional grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and contributions from alumni and other individuals and organizations.
MEANWHILE AT THE MUSEUM
The Michigan State University Museum is the state's natural and cultural history museum, with collections, research, programs and three floors of exhibitions that focus on Michigan and its relationship to the Great Lakes and the world beyond. The MSU Museum was the first in Michigan to be named a Smithsonian Institution affiliate in 2001. Currently on exhibit at the museum is "Quilts Old and New: Reproductions from the Great Lakes Quilt Center," running through Aug. 17 in the museum's Main Gallery.
The exhibit showcases 12 new quilts that were inspired by quilts in the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Quilt Center collection, and the reproduction quilts are showcased next to the originals.
"Historically, quilters have relied on older quilts as reference sources for designs, techniques, fabrics, and styles," explains Mary Worrall, cultural collections assistant at the MSU Museum. "Reproductions raise both solutions and challenges for documenting and interpreting history."
Today, textile manufacturers frequently produce textiles that are based from older (and usually out-of-print) fabrics, and pattern manufacturers write step-by-step instructions that make it easier for artists to reproduce older quilts, explains Worrall. The new quilts on display were designed and patterned by Worrall and Beth Donaldson, quilt collections assistant.
Because textiles are easily damaged by long exposure to light or by handling, museums can only put their quilts on exhibit for short periods of time; and by creating and displaying reproductions, they can share the collections with a wider audience, she adds.
IF YOU GO
The MSU Museum is located on West Circle Drive, next to Beaumont Tower. The museum is open weekdays 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and Sundays 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. Admission is free and the facility is accessible to persons with disabilities. For more information, contact (517) 355-2370. Or, to learn more about the Great Lakes Quilt Center at the MSU Museum, visit www.museum.msu.edu.
SHARING TRADITIONS: THE CULTURE OF CREATIVITY
In addition to the exhibits noted above, the Michigan State University Museum has found other creative ways to share its quilt collections with the public and avid quilt-makers, numbering more than 20 million.
… Patterns and instructions for the quilts featured in the "Quilts Old and New" exhibit are contained in the book, "Great Lakes Great Quilts: Quilts from the MSU Museum Collections," edited by MacDowell, which also profiles Great Lakes quilting traditions. Meanwhile, the MSU Museum worked with fabric retailer RJR Fashion Fabrics of Torrance, Calif., to develop two fabric lines that reproduce textiles in the museum's collections. Royalties from the fabric sales helps support care and maintenance of the original collections.
… A number of other publications produced by the MSU Museum and the Great Lakes, Great Quilts web site chronicle textile traditions, as well as stories about quilts and quilt-related experiences and information about regional resources.
… Six exhibitions about quilting traditions and examples of the quilt collections are currently in circulation through the MSU Museum's Traveling Exhibition Service, ranging from Michigan Quilt Project quilt blocks, Native American quilt traditions, African-American quilt traditions, and "The Mary Schafer Collection: A Legacy of Quilt History," which details historic quilts and quilt-makers and a national resurgence of quilting spurred on in part by the country's bicentennial in 1976.
… Last year, the Michigan State University Museum and MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online at MSU, teamed with The Alliance for American Quilts to launch two major projects. The first, "Quilt Treasures," documents and presents through video-recorded interviews and web-based mini-documentaries, individuals who have played key roles in the quilt revival of the latter part of the twentieth century. The second, "Quilt Index," created a web center in which data collected on quilts in both public and private collections can be accessed for research and educational use. The first phase of this project, currently in progress and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is developing a database that includes information collected as part of statewide quilt documentation efforts. They are beginning with state quilt project data housed at four organizations: Michigan State University Museum, Illinois State Museum, Tennessee State Library and Archives and the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center.
… People who are around East Lansing in the summer also know that quilt programs have been a fixture at annual folklife festivals produced by the Michigan State University Museum; the programs included demonstrations of quilting, on-stage discussions of quilting, and hands-on activities for festival visitors. Festivals of Michigan Folklife and the National and Great Lakes folk festivals have included programs featuring Native American quilting, African-American quilting, family quilts, and the NAMES Project Quilt, as well as demonstrations and discussions about quilting by invited traditional artists. This year's Great Lakes Folk Festival is Aug. 8-10 in downtown East Lansing.