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truepenny1. for those who are interested, this is the email I just sent to the Milwaukee Art Museum about the quilt exhibit:
Dear Milwaukee Art Museum:
While I very much enjoyed your exhibit, American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collectcion, and was impressed by the excellence of the quilts, there was one thing that gave me pause.
The quilts in the exhibit were from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1760-1850), and they were, of course, made by women. I said to my husband, "This is the most women's names you will ever see in a museum exhibit," and that was something I particularly appreciated: seeing women's artwork taken seriously and presented as worthy of respect, even if it was evident that the curators were struggling to find the vocabulary to talk about the quilts as art rather than merely as social artifacts. I understand how difficult that can be, and the problem did not in any way detract from my appreciation of the exhibit. In the gift shop, however, the last room in the exhibit, there were three quilts on display by Bruce Seeds.
Let me be clear: I think that it is awesome that a twenty-first century man has chosen to take up quilting, and furthermore, I think that Mr. Seeds' quilts are indeed beautiful and quite interesting in juxtaposition with the quilts in the exhibit. But by placing them at the end of this exhibit of early American quilts, without any acknowledgment of the fact that women continued to make quilts for the 160 years in between and are still making quilts, some of which are every bit as iconoclastic, if not more so, than Mr. Seeds', are you not perpetuating a particularly unpleasant canard: that women may be competent to make (in this case) quilts, but it takes a man to make real art out of them? In this context, I cannot help but feel that Mr. Seeds' slightly supercilious self-consciousness ("not your grandmother's quilts" indeed) is an unfortunate sidelight on the valuation of women's artwork--the very thing that I had found so striking and admirable in the rest of the exhibit.
Moreover, when I investigated Mr. Seeds' website, I found this item in his FAQ <http://quilts.bruceseeds.com/info.htm>:
***
Do you really make these yourself? Yes, the cutting, the piecing, the sewing and the ironing are all done by me, with one exception: the stitching process that binds the top, the batting and the back together requires special equipment. So I pay a service provider to do that step for me, in a pattern and thread color of my choosing. For most of my quilts, that service is provided by Patched Works of Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
***
I went to Patched Works' site <http://www.patchedworks.com/> and found that they do in fact have a special machine called a long arm, so what Mr. Seeds says here is not wrong. On the other hand, and the thing that I find problematic, "the stitching process that binds the top, the batting, and the back together" is called, by definition, quilting. It's what makes something a quilt as opposed to a blanket. And while the long arm machine is one way to quilt, one can also quilt on an ordinary sewing machine, or even by hand: it does not require special equipment. Outsourcing this part of the process is an entirely legitimate choice, even if Mr. Seeds' phrasing is somewhat disingenuous, but I am troubled by the way in which his self-presentation as an artist is devaluing an integral part of the art form of quilting. It makes your choice to showcase his work with these early American quilts--especially given the number of superb whitework quilts in the exhibit--almost painfully ironic.
I understand that the focus of the exhibit was on early American quilts, and thus it did not have the scope to explore the rich continuing tradition(s) of American quilting, but if you could find space for one modern quilter in your gift shop, could you not either (a.) have found space for two? or (b.) have made that single quilter a woman, so as to continue the celebration of women's arts that made the exhibit so moving? It is not difficult to find examples of contemporary women quilters doing fascinating work; five minutes with Google netted me half a dozen.
After a lovely, thought-provoking, and even inspiring exhibit, this sudden descent into patriarchalism left me feeling dissatisfied and bitter--as this letter now attests. Nevertheless, thank you for putting on this exhibit of early American women's quilts. It is far better to have a flawed exhibit than no exhibit at all.
Sincerely,
Sarah Monette
2. for those who aren't interested in quilts, but do like animals, have a video of seven-week-old Pallas's Cats* (there are several other videos of these kittens if this one charms your socks off as it did mine).
3. If you don't like either animals or quilts . . . well, you probably like books, so here: Mary Robinette Kowal is having a caption contest in which she will be giving away two signed copies of her debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey.
And now I really need to get some work done.
---
*I'd never heard of Pallas's Cats before this morning. They're like a cross between cats and owls, with some raccoon spliced in for good measure. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala, wikipedia says they're native to the Asian steppes.)
Dear Milwaukee Art Museum:
While I very much enjoyed your exhibit, American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collectcion, and was impressed by the excellence of the quilts, there was one thing that gave me pause.
The quilts in the exhibit were from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1760-1850), and they were, of course, made by women. I said to my husband, "This is the most women's names you will ever see in a museum exhibit," and that was something I particularly appreciated: seeing women's artwork taken seriously and presented as worthy of respect, even if it was evident that the curators were struggling to find the vocabulary to talk about the quilts as art rather than merely as social artifacts. I understand how difficult that can be, and the problem did not in any way detract from my appreciation of the exhibit. In the gift shop, however, the last room in the exhibit, there were three quilts on display by Bruce Seeds.
Let me be clear: I think that it is awesome that a twenty-first century man has chosen to take up quilting, and furthermore, I think that Mr. Seeds' quilts are indeed beautiful and quite interesting in juxtaposition with the quilts in the exhibit. But by placing them at the end of this exhibit of early American quilts, without any acknowledgment of the fact that women continued to make quilts for the 160 years in between and are still making quilts, some of which are every bit as iconoclastic, if not more so, than Mr. Seeds', are you not perpetuating a particularly unpleasant canard: that women may be competent to make (in this case) quilts, but it takes a man to make real art out of them? In this context, I cannot help but feel that Mr. Seeds' slightly supercilious self-consciousness ("not your grandmother's quilts" indeed) is an unfortunate sidelight on the valuation of women's artwork--the very thing that I had found so striking and admirable in the rest of the exhibit.
Moreover, when I investigated Mr. Seeds' website, I found this item in his FAQ <http://quilts.bruceseeds.com/info.htm>:
***
Do you really make these yourself? Yes, the cutting, the piecing, the sewing and the ironing are all done by me, with one exception: the stitching process that binds the top, the batting and the back together requires special equipment. So I pay a service provider to do that step for me, in a pattern and thread color of my choosing. For most of my quilts, that service is provided by Patched Works of Elm Grove, Wisconsin.
***
I went to Patched Works' site <http://www.patchedworks.com/> and found that they do in fact have a special machine called a long arm, so what Mr. Seeds says here is not wrong. On the other hand, and the thing that I find problematic, "the stitching process that binds the top, the batting, and the back together" is called, by definition, quilting. It's what makes something a quilt as opposed to a blanket. And while the long arm machine is one way to quilt, one can also quilt on an ordinary sewing machine, or even by hand: it does not require special equipment. Outsourcing this part of the process is an entirely legitimate choice, even if Mr. Seeds' phrasing is somewhat disingenuous, but I am troubled by the way in which his self-presentation as an artist is devaluing an integral part of the art form of quilting. It makes your choice to showcase his work with these early American quilts--especially given the number of superb whitework quilts in the exhibit--almost painfully ironic.
I understand that the focus of the exhibit was on early American quilts, and thus it did not have the scope to explore the rich continuing tradition(s) of American quilting, but if you could find space for one modern quilter in your gift shop, could you not either (a.) have found space for two? or (b.) have made that single quilter a woman, so as to continue the celebration of women's arts that made the exhibit so moving? It is not difficult to find examples of contemporary women quilters doing fascinating work; five minutes with Google netted me half a dozen.
After a lovely, thought-provoking, and even inspiring exhibit, this sudden descent into patriarchalism left me feeling dissatisfied and bitter--as this letter now attests. Nevertheless, thank you for putting on this exhibit of early American women's quilts. It is far better to have a flawed exhibit than no exhibit at all.
Sincerely,
Sarah Monette
2. for those who aren't interested in quilts, but do like animals, have a video of seven-week-old Pallas's Cats* (there are several other videos of these kittens if this one charms your socks off as it did mine).
3. If you don't like either animals or quilts . . . well, you probably like books, so here: Mary Robinette Kowal is having a caption contest in which she will be giving away two signed copies of her debut novel, Shades of Milk and Honey.
And now I really need to get some work done.
---
*I'd never heard of Pallas's Cats before this morning. They're like a cross between cats and owls, with some raccoon spliced in for good measure. (
matociquala, wikipedia says they're native to the Asian steppes.)
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Date: 2010-07-27 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-07-27 09:38 pm (UTC)Um, sorry. I appear to have lost myself there.
The odds are good that Seeds' work may be either in their permanent collection, or part of a loan program they use to push local artists, with his name coming up just then as someone who was able to provide somthing suitable to the theme. It's therefore entirely possible they never stopped and thought twice about the unfortunate aspects of that choice. Of course, it's possible they did think twice and said "Screw it! Who cares?" If the former, we have a chance for a Learning Moment; if the latter--well, it never kills them to have someone say "I saw that thing you did."
I recall seeing one of Louise Nevelson's pieces at a museum in Kansas City. On the wall card they quote a critic from the 1940s, commenting on one of her shows:
"We learn the artist is a woman in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by a great figure among the moderns."
Gosh, that would have been embarrassing. Lucky he dodged that bullet, isn't it?
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Date: 2010-07-27 09:50 pm (UTC)What is it with people sending me pictures of Pallas cats today? You're #2....
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Date: 2010-07-27 09:53 pm (UTC)http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/07/27/funny-pictures-video-pallas-cat-kittehs/
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Date: 2010-07-27 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 09:57 pm (UTC)wow.
this is the sort of thing that makes you remember why fired-up feminism is necessary.
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Date: 2010-07-27 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-07-27 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-27 11:52 pm (UTC)Thank you for the link! That's utterly astonishing.
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Date: 2010-07-28 12:08 am (UTC)I did it all by myself, except for the boring girly bits.
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Date: 2010-07-28 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-11-02 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 10:03 pm (UTC)