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Photo by Lee Kogan
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Modest about her own accomplishments during her more than 40 years as a quilt historian and researcher, Cuesta Benberry was much more open when asked about her donation of her extensive library to the American Folk Art Museum. She was the honored guest at the museum's Cuesta Benberry Day in October.
Her accumulation of research materials--covering two centuries of quiltmaking and textile history--began during her days as a public school teacher and librarian in St. Louis. Cuesta began studying quilt block patterns, and soon her articles were published in Nimble Needle Treasures, Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, and Quilters Journal. She curated the exhibitions Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts in 1992 and A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans in 2000, and wrote the accompanying documentation. She compiled A Patchwork of Pieces: An Anthology of Early Quilt Stories, 1845-1940, with Carol Pinney Crabb in 1993, and developed the time line. Also in 1993, she curated the exhibition Hear My Quilts for the St. Louis Art Museum, the first time the museum displayed quilts by African American quiltmakers.
The donation to the American Folk Art Museum includes Cuesta's numerous books including rare and first edition titles, patterns and pattern catalogs, exhibition catalogs, periodicals, and other quilt-related ephemera she collected over the years. Her materials--available to quilt and textile scholars, folk art historians, women's studies specialists, and students of material and social culture in America--will complement the museum's existing Shirley K. Schlafer Library and renowned collection of more than 500 quilts.
For more information, contact the American Folk Art Museum, 45 West 53 St., New York, NY 10019; 212-265-1040; www.folkartmuseum.org.
--contributed by Deborah Harding
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