Obama presidency stitched in quilt exhibit at DuSable

• Reprints

Diana Bracy’s quilt, titled “44th President and First Lady,” is part of the “Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Inspired By President Barack Obama,” exhibit running Jan. 16-May 13 at the DuSable Museum of African American History.

‘Journey of Hope in
America: Quilts
Inspired By
President Barack Obama’

† Jan. 16- May 13

† DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 East 56th Pl.
† Admission: $10 for adults, $7 for senior and students, $3 ages 6 to 11 and children under 5 are free. Chicago residents recieve a discount.

† (773) 947-0600;
dusablemuseum.org

Article Extras

An historic moment stitched in time — the election of America’s first black president — is stitched on to more than 50 interpretive quilts in a new exhibit at the DuSable Museum of African American History.

“Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama,” opens Jan. 16, the official Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“The exhibition itself commemorates not just a political aspect but a moment in history with the first African-American president in the United States,” said Charles Bethea, DuSable’s chief operating officer and curator. “You won’t walk into an exhibit that feels like a political rally even though this happens to be an election year. What you will see is a sense of pride in American history.”

You will also see dozens of quilts created by fabric artists around the country, including four in Chicago and the suburbs.

“Aesthetically, it’s just a gorgeous exhibition,” Bethea said. “It’s head and shoulders above a lot of other fabric work I’ve seen personally.”

“Journey of Hope in America” was curated by Carolyn Mazloomi, a self-taught quilt maker and a quilt historian with a doctorate in aerospace engineering. Founder of the Women of Color Quilters Network, Mazloomi, who lives in West Chester, Ohio, put out a call for Obama-related quilts for the exhibit that first premiered in Washington D.C., in 2008, the week of Obama’s inauguration.

“I told them I didn’t want to see 44 quilts of the president,” she said. “They had to go deeper than that. They had to tell the deeper story. It’s not just about President Obama. You have to talk about, as an artist, whose shoulders the president stands on. The show is about history. How did we get from the slave ship to the president?”

Bethea promises visitors will get a “full sense of the grandeur of what it means to have an African-American president.”

“There are quilts that have some of Obama’s campaign slogan on them,” he said.”Other quilts are about the road to the White House, America’s civil rights movement and the like.”

Mazloomi said there is a long tradition of African-American quilting. African slaves brought to the United States weren’t taught to read or write, so they created narrative quilts to tell their stories.

“Quilts have long been recognized as an important facet of history,” she said. “Individual quilts themselves are sought out as historical documents.”

Bethea is anticipating great interest in the exhibit and hopes it brings first-time visitors to the DuSable, whether their interest in history, Obama or quilting and textile arts.

“From the caliber of the pieces themselves I’m not certain the average person is going to walk in and think quilt,” Bethea said. “A lot of them aren’t your typical bedspread size. Some are and some aren’t rectangle. It’s striking to see the wonder of the work all done in fabric.”

The DuSable Museum of African American History is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.