War. Natural disaster. Famine. Pandemics. Genocide. Migration. Colonization. The history of humanity tends to be told through the lens of large-scale catastrophic events. But sometimes, to truly understand the story of a people—to understand who we are—we must step inside those massive history-defining events and find the smaller, more intimate stories of what it means to be human on this planet. The recent Royal Ontario Museum exhibit, Quilts: Made in Canada did just that.
Why Quilts?
Featuring more than twenty Canadian-made quilts dating from the 1850s to the present, and all but two sourced from the ROM’s own collection, Quilts: Made in Canada doesn’t set out to be a comprehensive history of quilting, but rather a window into the lives of the people who created and used these textiles, and, by extension, our past, our present, and the themes that connect us all. But why quilts? Curious about the origin of the exhibit, I reached out to Arlene Gehmacher, the museum’s L.R. Wilson Curator of Canadian Art & Culture, who gave me a behind-the-scenes peek at the origin of the exhibit and shared her insights into the quilts themselves.
Appliqué quilt, “Wreath of flowers” or “garden wreath” pattern (and detail), 1865, Catherine Gage Pettit, Fruitland, ON. Appliquéd and pieced cotton. Gift of Hattie I. and Charlotte Jones. Full quilt image © ROM; quilt detail image credit, Michelle Woodvine.
All images © ROM unless otherwise noted.
