Center for American History announces Put a Roof Over Our Head quilt exhibit
AUSTIN, TEXAS – January 12, 2007 – The Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin announces the February 5 opening of a new quilt exhibit, Put a Roof Over Our Head.
The exhibit, courtesy of the Alliance for American Quilts, consists of 74 house-shaped quilts created by quilt makers from across the U.S. and three other countries to celebrate the Alliance’s move to its new headquarters in Asheville, North Carolina.
“Our House” by Keti Kasrashvili, Irina Lavrinenko, Nino “Chuchuka” Chargeishvili
The exhibit will be displayed until March 17, with portions of the exhibit divided among the Center’s three museums: the Sam Rayburn Museum in Bonham, Texas; the John Nance Garner Museum in Uvalde, Texas; and the Winedale historic complex near Round Top, Texas.
“The exhibit is a prime example of the close partnership between the Center for American History and the Alliance for American Quilts. Together, we’re working to acquire, document, preserve, and present information about quilts and quilt history,” said Center Assistant Director Brenda Gunn. “The nonprofit Alliance for American Quilts is a network of scholars, curators, quilt artists, librarians, archivists, and others from around the country dedicated to recognizing quilts as works of art and as pieces of history with stories to be documented and preserved. We are honored that our Winedale Center for the Quilt is one of three regional centers with which the Alliance has formalized partnership arrangements.”
The Alliance and the Center are also collaborating on The Quilt Index, a centralized, online repository of photographs and information about quilts in public and private collections (http://www.quiltindex.org). By late 2007, the Index is expected to include more that 15,000 photographs and records.
For information about the Alliance for American Quilts and the Put a Roof Over Our Head exhibit, visit http://www.centerforthequilt.org. For information about the Center for American History’s quilt initiatives, call Brenda Gunn at (512) 495-4385 or visit http://www.cah.utexas.edu/museums/winedale_quilts.php.
