Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape tour

Name: Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape tour
Start: 2026-01-30T12:00:00
End: 2026-01-30T12:00:00
Location: UW Nancy Nicholas Hall-Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery

Apr 22, 2026 12:00 PM

RSVP

UW Nancy Nicholas Hall-Lynn Mecklenburg Textile Gallery 1300 Linden Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706

July 11, 2025

3:08 PM

courtesy of Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture

A section of a late 19th century quilt.

A late 19th century quilt in the "Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape" exhibition.

Quilts are more than just blankets. The medium is a vehicle for personal and political expression. This exhibit of 19th- and 20th-century American quilts from the UW-Madison’s Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection examines these works of art as a metaphor for the landscape and the built environment. “Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape” has been thoughtfully curated by Marina Moskowitz, professor of design studies and the Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Material Culture & Design at UW-Madison, who’s “long had an interest in the ‘stuff’ of human life.” A public gallery tour will take place at 6 p.m. on Sept. 4 (register here) with after hours drop-ins with the curator from 5-7 p.m. on Sept. 5 and 6. Moskowitz is highly knowledgeable and this is a great chance to get insider insights.

media release: September 3, 2025 @ 10:00 am - May 10, 2026 @ 4:00 pm

The galleries will be off view for Legal Holidays on December 24, December 25, December 31, and January 1. The galleries will be on view during all other regular gallery hours throughout winter break. Regular gallery hours are listed on our website.

Parallel Lines: Quilts and the American Landscape explores the parallel processes of quilt-making within the American home and place-making on the American landscape. Featuring nineteenth- and twentieth-century American quilts drawn from the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, the exhibit examines some of the most familiar quilt forms – such as nine-patch squares, eight-pointed stars, and “log cabin” blocks with cloth strips radiating outward from a central square “hearth”– as the basis for individual creativity and innovative design. Visitors will be encouraged to view American quilts through a new lens, by comparing these geometric motifs and strong linear compositions to the boundaries, pathways, and structures of the built environment.

At the same time, abstracted representations of the natural world will remind the audience of the varied knowledge systems through which Americans made sense of their environment. These quilted motifs not only evoked the American landscape, but circulated through it, by means of individual teachers, printed instructions and patterns, and the objects themselves, across generations and among cultural groups. The exhibit will also provide a timely opportunity to consider the place of textiles in American history and culture – as a form of creative expression, a site of cultural exchange, and a basis of the political economy – as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

This exhibition is curated by Dr. Marina Moskowitz, professor of design studies and the Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Material Culture & Design. Support for this exhibition comes from the Anonymous Fund.