This dazzling display presents an indigenous American art, an alternative aesthetic tradition quite different from that seen in widely known European-American quilts. In contrast, many African American quilts are characterized by strips, bold colors, large designs, asymmetry, multiple patterns, and improvisation. African American quilts are unique in American arts because they show a combination or creolization of African textile ideas and symbols with American traditions.

The nation's strongest tradition of African-American quilting survives today in the Southern United States, practiced by women who have pursued their art in face of difficult economic, social, and political odds. The exhibition honors living artists and promotes an active art. African-American quilting should be recognized and celebrated now so that it can be preserved and continued in the future.

AFRICAN AMERICAN QUILTS, was organized by Dr. Maude Southwell Wahlman after extensive fieldwork in Africa, and throughout the South and New England, where she discovered and interviewed many African-American quilters, and documented their work. Her prize winning Yale dissertation, African-American Quiltmaking: Origins, Development, and Significance, serves as the basis for exhibition materials. Dr. Wahlman has organized seventeen art exhibitions, written four books, eleven exhibit catalogs, and over thirty articles on African and African American arts, and lectures widely in the United States.