Building a Legacy: African American Quilt History
No artistic form is more closely associated with African American culture than quilt making, representing skill, aesthetic beauty, and utilitarian need. For African Americans the quilt became a covert expression of resistance within the context of storytelling. In the past few decades, traveling museum exhibitions have brought African American quilts to the public, stimulating broad interest and offering extraordinary opportunities for scholarly study. As a result, African American-made quilts are now celebrated and highly collectable. From improvisation to art quilts, Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi will discuss the historical and cultural significance of quilts made in the African American community.
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Carolyn L. Mazloomi is an artist, author, historian, and curator acknowledged as being among the most influential African American quilt historians in the United States. Widely exhibited in the United States and internationally, her quilts have been included in five exhibitions at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery. Her artwork can be found in numerous important museums and corporate collections, such as the Wadsworth Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Fine Arts Museum Boston, American Museum of Design, Bell Telephone, the Cleveland Clinic, and Exxon. She has appeared on television shows such as CBS Morning Show, Reading Rainbow, The Today Show, CNN, and has been the subject of several film documentaries. Dr. Mazloomi is one of six artists commissioned to create artwork for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center Museum. In 1985 she founded the Women of Color Quilters Network, an international organization with a membership of 1700, which has been a major force in fostering the fiberart works of African American people. Through Dr. Mazloomi’s effort WCQN members have had their quilts presented in venues such as prominent museums and galleries, and in internationally traveled exhibitions. She is a frequent consultant for art exhibitions, authors, and historians. In 2003 Dr. Mazloomi was awarded the first Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award. Ohio Heritage Fellows are among the state’s living cultural treasures. Dr. Mazloomi has also received the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Award, the highest award in the nation for traditional art. She was also inducted into the Quilters Hall of Fame Museum the same year and received the United States Artist Fellowship in 2020.
Dr. Myrah Brown Green is a master quiltmaker, author, an independent curator, and an art historian whose studies focus on World Symbols. Raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr. Myrah’s love for arts began as a child while spending countless hours creating at the Community Art Center in the housing complex where she lived and enjoyed frequent excursions to culturally rich art institutions. Dr. Myrah moved to Brooklyn, New York to attend Pratt Institute where she received a BFA in Fashion Merchandising and a minor in Textile Design, later receiving a Masters/PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies focusing on world symbols. She teaches Art History at Medgar Evers College. Her quilts are in a number of prestigious collections including, the Bloomberg Foundation, the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum, Michigan State University, a Smithsonian satellite and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. Dr. Myrah shares her artistic knowledge by coaching creatives and assisting emerging and seasoned artists archive their artwork. Her award-winning book, “Brooklyn on My Mind: Black Artists from the WPA to the Present”, was released in November of 2018. Her latest book, “Keepers of a Movement: The Black Art Collector” is due to be released in Spring 2026.
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