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Quilts on the clothesline at Polly Bennett's house, Alabama Route 5, near Alberta, from the book The Quilts of Gee's Bend.
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The quilts, first shown at The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, in the fall of 2002, represent the lives of a community of about 750 African Americans who live on the small spit of land, just five miles long and eight miles wide, southwest of Selma. Named for Joseph Gee, the first white man to claim the land as his in the early 1800s, the plantation was sold to Mark Pettway in 1845, and most of the current residents are the descendants of slaves who worked the fields for Pettway and then became tenant farmers following emancipation. The federal government stepped in with financial assistance in the late 1930s, and many were able to buy their farms.
The quilts in the exhibit were collected by the Tinwood Alliance, a nonprofit foundation for the support of African American vernacular art. Some of the quilts are worn and fragile, and the decision of whether to schedule other exhibitions will be made once the condition of the quilts is reevaluated after the show at the Whitney.
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"H" Variation, 77" x 88", by Nettie Young.
Photos courtesy of Tinwood Books.
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The quilts in the exhibit were collected by the Tinwood Alliance, a nonprofit foundation for the support of African American vernacular art. Some of the quilts are worn and fragile, and the decision of whether to schedule other exhibitions will be made once the condition of the quilts is reevaluated after the show at the Whitney.
Bookstores and online retailers offer the two large volumes Tinwood Books has produced on the area, the quilts, and their makers: Gee's Bend: The Women and Their Quilts and The Quilts of Gee's Bend. For information about Tinwood Media or the Tinwood Alliance, phone 404-607-7172, or visit the website www.tinwoodmedia.com.
For more information on the Whitney exhibit, contact the museum at 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., New York, NY 10021; 212-570-3676; website www.whitney.org.
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