Major show of African American quilts opening at BAMPFA — despite federal funding cuts

In the summer of 2018, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive got an unexpected phone call. The news at the other end of the line would be some of the biggest in the museum’s history.

A few weeks earlier, an Oakland man named Eli Leon had passed away at the age of 82. A retired psychotherapist, Leon had spent the latter half of his life pursuing a second career as a self-taught scholar of African American quilts. He assembled what is believed to be the world’s largest collection of these works, encompassing more than 3,000 quilts in total. 

Unbeknownst to anyone at BAMPFA, Leon had bequeathed nearly all of this collection to the museum.

This monumental bequest (which BAMPFA formally accepted in 2019) transformed the museum into the world’s preeminent institutional holder of African American quilts, which now make up nearly one-fifth of BAMPFA’s art holdings. 

Starting June 8, Bay Area audiences will have the opportunity to encounter a sweeping cross-section of this collection in Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California — the first time in the collection’s history that it has been the subject of a museum survey at this scale. The exhibition is opening despite a recent federal funding cut for conservation work on the quilts.

Researching and conserving the quilts

BAMPFA has embarked on a long-term project of cataloging, conserving, researching and exhibiting the African American Quilt Collection, a rigorous multi-year commitment of which Routed West is one of the most significant milestones to date.

To oversee this process, BAMPFA hired Dr. Elaine Yau, an art historian working at the intersection of folk and modern art. Yau has spent the past six years illuminating new scholarly dimensions of these quilts and the artists who created them — many of whose names are not widely known, and in some cases have been lost to history. Many of these families have passed their quilting traditions down across multiple generations — such as National Heritage Fellow Laverne Brackens, whose quilts will be displayed in Routed West alongside those of her daughter Sherry Byrd and granddaughter Bara Byrd-Stewart. 

As the curator of Routed West, Yau chose to focus the first museum survey of the collection on the topic of migration — a theme that is deeply woven into the story of these quilts. Yau’s initial research revealed that many of the quiltmakers in the collection had arrived on the West Coast during the Second Great Migration, roughly 1940 to 1970, when millions of African Americans emigrated from the southern United States. Hundreds of thousands of these families settled in California, bringing with them quilts and quilt making traditions.

As a locus of African American migration during this era, the Bay Area — particularly Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond — became central to the renewal of Black quiltmaking practices on the West Coast. Some of these quilt artists later became nationally recognized for their work, including Brackens, Arbie Williams and Rosie Lee Tompkins. 

Tompkins was the subject of a BAMPFA retrospective that the New York Times declared one of the most important art exhibitions of 2020. The African American Quilt Collection at BAMPFA holds more than 500 quilts by Tompkins, including rarely seen works that will go on view in Routed West.

A new generation of Black quilt artists continues to advance this vibrant legacy into the 21st century. The East Bay is home to multiple artist communities keeping these traditions alive, most notably the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, turning 25 this year. In recognition of these groups’ continuing contributions to African American quiltmaking, Yau invited members of this community to include recent work in the exhibition’s final section — a powerful reminder of the intergenerational legacy of these practices, which have been passed down through female relatives over the years.

“With Routed West, we’re activating the extraordinary collection of African American quilts at BAMPFA to honor the stories of the individuals and communities whose vibrant artistic traditions are indispensable to — but too often omitted from — the larger narrative of American art history, and of our own history here in California,” Yau said. 

“These extraordinary quilts carry within them stories of resilience, creativity, self-determination and ingenuity — narratives that inform a deeper understanding of quilts, quiltmaking and practices of collective care that continue to sustain Black life in the United States.” 

Federal funding cuts

For BAMPFA, the unveiling of the first museum survey of these quilts is a powerful moment, but also a complicated one. During the final preparations for Routed West, BAMPFA learned that two grants it had previously secured from the federal government — one from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the other from the National Endowment for the Arts — had been summarily terminated, a combined loss of more than $260,000 in vital funding that had been earmarked for the exhibition and conservation of these treasured quilts. 

In notifying the museum of this decision, the federal government stated that these initiatives “no longer serve the interest of the United States.”

BAMPFA is exploring alternate sources of funding for the conservation work, and considering the possibility that some of the work has to be delayed. 

In response to the federal government’s decision, BAMPFA’s executive director Julie Rodrigues Widholm shared a public statement defending the value of these precious artworks — most of which were created by Black women who have not historically had access to the platform of a nationally renowned art museum — and encouraging audiences to come celebrate these works on a free Community Day on Sunday, June 8.

“We strongly believe that these quilts are an important piece of African American history and cultural heritage — and therefore of American history and cultural heritage,” said Widholm. “Despite the challenges we face at this time, nothing will diminish BAMPFA’s pride and enthusiasm for our upcoming exhibition”

Sponsored by Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

This story was written and paid for by the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. BAMPFA ignites cultural change for a more inclusive and artistic world. BAMPFA has been uniquely dedicated to art and film since 1970, with international programming that is locally connected and globally relevant. It holds more than 25,000 artworks and 18,000 films and videos in its collection, with particular strengths in modern and contemporary art and historical Chinese painting, as well as the world’s largest collection of African American quilts. As part of the University of California, Berkeley, BAMPFA is committed to artistic diversity through its robust slate of art exhibitions, film screenings, artist talks, live performances and educational programs that shed new light on the art of the past and connect our audiences with leading filmmakers and artists of our time. BAMPFA sits on the edge of campus and downtown Berkeley, where it welcomes visitors from across and beyond the Bay Area in a repurposed building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.