Don’t be fooled by the construction at the Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Museum director Sonja Lunde recently assured visitors that it's still open, despite undergoing renovations.
"It's one of the few spaces on the campus where you don't have to pay tuition or be enrolled in anything to come in," Lunde said. "Everybody’s welcome."
Inside the Fleming, the halls are a riot of color and cloth. The main room currently features a traveling exhibition called "Hand Stitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts," on loan from the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
Another room holds a local exhibition, "About Place," featuring quilts from the Fleming, the Middlebury College Museum of Art and the Shelburne Museum. Common themes tie the pieces together — many of them have stars in them, for example. But each quilt is also completely unique.
The largest piece in the room is the UVM Bicentennial Quilt. Members of the Women of UVM Quilt Group stitched it together in 1975. Each square depicts a facet of campus life. Curator Kristan Hanson sees the colorful quilt as an invitation for people to think about the importance of place to their understanding of culture and history.
"Each block is filled with details and little gems, and the more that you look at the quilt, the more that you see," she said.
Hanson didn’t know much about quilting before curating this exhibition. She now has a deep appreciation for the art form, in part because of how approachable it is.
"The barrier for having conversations about them and making meaningful connections with them is lower in some ways than standing in front of a painting with a gilded frame that some people might find intimidating," she said. "A lot of these objects come from the domestic sphere, or you might have one in your own home, or you might know a quilter or make quilts yourself."
The traveling exhibition is full of showstoppers and jaw-droppers. One quilt from 1886 features a map of the United States, crafted from sumptuous jewel-toned velvet. Museum staff have had to gently stop people from touching it.
Other pieces call into question the viewer's most basic definition of a quilt. A piece by Jean-Marcel St. Jacques is made of wood and debris collected in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The artist's wooden quilts are a tribute to his great grandmother, who made patchwork quilts, and his great grandfather, a junk collector.
Each quilt tells a story, and it draws stories out of the viewer, too. Allison Belisle of Brookfield and her mother, Sandra Belisle, pointed out familiar scenes in the UVM bicentennial quilt and traded "oohs" of wonder.
"I know how much work goes into these, how much love, how much dedication goes into this," said Sandra, a quilter herself and a UVM alumna.
"There's so many facets involved with this exhibit that it's just mind blowing," Allison added. "I could stay here all night long."
There's no sleeping allowed at the museum, of course, but there is time for repeat visits. The quilting exhibitions at the Fleming run through Dec. 6.
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