Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

June 8, 2025—November 30, 2025

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration through approximately one hundred quilts representing the work of eighty individuals, many of them women. It is the first group show drawn from a transformative bequest of African American quilts that the museum received in 2019.

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Sherry Byrd: pieced 1990; Irene Bankhead, quilted 1990. Untitled (Medallion); 95 x 75 1/2 in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Susan Pless: Untitled (Strip), before 1944; 82 x 75 in; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Alice Neal: Mary Bright Commemorative Quilt, 1956; 78 1⁄2 x 62 3⁄4 in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Emma Hall: Untitled (Double Wedding Ring), c. 1940; 71 x 71 1⁄2 in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Elizabeth Munn: Untitled (Roman Stripe Medallion); 80 1⁄2 x 70 in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Kitty Gladys Jones: pieced before 1970; Atleaver Jones: quilted c. 1978. Untitled (Square in a Square), 84 x 69 in.; Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland
Irene Bankhead: Untitled (Bars), 2001; 96 x 85 in., Bequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA. Photo: Kevin Candland

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Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

June 8, 2025—November 30, 2025

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration. As millions of African Americans sought greater opportunities and escape from the South’s oppressive racial environment from 1940 to 1970, they carried quilts as functional objects and physical reminders of the homes they left behind. Simultaneously, the quiltmaking skills that many migrants brought with them—frequently learned from mothers, grandmothers, and other kin—spurred the creation of a new wave of African American quiltmaking in the later part of the twentieth century, extending its roots into the Western United States. The quilts in this exhibition explore the medium’s unique capacity for connecting kin across time and distance, holding memory and ancestral knowledge, and opening up space for beauty and artistic ingenuity.

Consisting...

Consisting of one hundred artworks representing nearly eighty individuals—many of them women with ties to the Bay Area—and recent works by local Black quilt artists, Routed West honors quiltmakers of this distinctive migrant generation and those who carry forth their aesthetic and cultural legacies. It is the first group exhibition of artworks drawn from the African American quilt collection at BAMPFA. Enhanced by a fully illustrated exhibition catalog with significant new scholarship, the exhibition invites audiences into a conversation around the quilts’ joyful power as objects of African American cultural heritage and artworks within expansive histories of art in the United States.

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Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California is curated by Elaine Y. Yau, Associate Curator and Academic Liaison, with Matthew Villar Miranda, Curatorial Associate.

The Henry Luce Foundation has provided generous lead support for the exhibition and accompanying catalog, including significant funding for research, conservation, and care of the African American Quilt Collection at BAMPFA. Major exhibition support is provided by the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support for the Routed West catalog is provided by Brenda and Michael Drake and a grant from the Black Studies Collaboratory at UC Berkeley, an awardee of the Mellon Foundation’s Just Futures Initiative. Conservation of the quilt collection was made possible by major grants from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Save America’s Treasures program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Office of the Chancellor at UC Berkeley.

The exhibition is also supported by generous gifts from an Anonymous Donor, Diedrick Brackens, Barbara Kimport, Catherine and James Koshland, Winifred and Philip Smith, and Cynthia Tongson.

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

June 8, 2025—November 30, 2025

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