'Recycling and Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s' at Hillestad Gallery
Released on 06/21/2007, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
WHEN: Monday, Jul. 2, 2007, through Aug. 31, 2007
WHERE: Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, 2nd Floor, Home Economics Building, 35th Street north of East Campus Loop
The quilt exhibition "Recycling and Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s" will be on view at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery July 2 through Aug. 31. Quilts from the collection of the International Quilt Study Center show how one group in American society responded to the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The Great Depression was the longest and most severe economic crisis in U.S. history. Jobs were scarce, standards of living and well-being plummeted and many areas of American popular culture showed the effects. Passed on orally in many families, the experience of life in hard times has become part of the common heritage of millions of Americans.
The generations who lived through the Depression are now elderly and soon the living voices describing those times will pass. One lasting souvenir of the era will be its quilts. The exhibition "Recycling and Resourcefulness: Quilts of the 1930s" will feature quilts made by women who lived by the saying, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." The beauty and functionality they created from recycled fabrics from feed and flour sacks, old clothes and scraps left over from dressmaking left a lasting legacy of quiltmaking tradition. These examples of material culture allow a glimpse into the lives of women who may have been overlooked or invisible, but who made up the better part of the backbone of a country during the "hard times."
The Hillestad Gallery is on the second floor of the Home Economics Building on 35th Street north of East Campus Loop. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday (closed July 4) and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. "Summer Saturdays" through Aug. 25. Admission is free.
A related lecture by Merikay Waldvogel, author of "Soft Covers for Hard Times: Quiltmaking and the Great Depression," will begin at 5 p.m. July 19 in Room 11 of the Home Economics Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.
The online database of the International Quilt Study Center provides an easily searchable source of quilts from the center's collection. Visit www.quiltstudy.unl.edu.
CONTACT: Maureen Ose, International Quilt Study Center, (402) 472-7232