The International Quilt Study Center & Museum at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska is the home of the largest known public collection of quilts in the world.
More information can be found online at QuiltStudy.org.
The International Quilt Study Center & Museum was founded in 1997 when native Nebraskans Ardis and Robert James donated their collection of nearly 950 quilts to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Their contribution became the centerpiece of what is now the largest publicly held quilt collection in the world.
Through private funds from the University of Nebraska Foundation and a lead gift from the James family, the center opened in its new location in 2008. The glass and brick “green” building, designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, houses the quilts, a state-of-the-art research and storage space, educational displays, and custom-crafted galleries where selections from the collections and special exhibitions are shown to the public on a rotating basis.
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Exhibition of Korean Pojagi patchwork and textiles from the collection of Soon-Hee Kim of Korea.
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Exhibition "Quilts in Common"
The quilts range from early examples of American and European quilts to contemporary studio quilts and international quilts. The collection now numbers more than 3200 quilts from twenty four countries, dating from the early 18th century to the present. Faculty and curatorial staff, visiting scholars and graduate student researchers pursue the study of the world's quilt heritage at the center, and an ongoing acquisitions program seeks to document the full scope of global quilting traditions. The Center publishes catalogues to accompany some of its exhibitions, and these have included Wild by Design, Quilts in Common, American Quilts in the Modern Age 1870 - 1940, Perspectives: Art, Craft, Design and the Studio Quilt, and Marseille: The Cradle of White Corded Quilting.
The museum is located at 1523 N. 33rd Street in Lincoln, NE.
The International Quilt Study Center & Museum is an academic program of the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design in the College of Education and Human Sciences at UNL. The department offers a masters degree in Textile History with a quilt studies emphasis.
Famous quotes containing the words quilt, study, center and/or museum:
“... probably all of the women in this book are working to make part of the same quilt to keep us from freezing to death in a world that grows harsher and bleaker—where male is the norm and the ideal human being is hard, violent and cold: a macho rock. Every woman who makes of her living something strong and good is sharing bread with us.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes
That all things have their center in their dying....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The back meets the front.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2650, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)