Milwaukee Art Museum features new exhibition featuring quilts from the 1700s and 1800s

Milwaukee museum features quilt exhibition

MILWAUKEE — A new exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum will feature one of the world’s finest collections of early American quilts.

Featuring rare textiles of the late 1700s and early 1800s, it’s called “American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection” and it runs Saturday through September 6.

Quilts make political statements, celebrate marriages, and document the textile trade.

Many of the 40 quilts were collected Henry Francis du Pont, one of the 20th century’s most avid antique collectors and horticulturists. They were featured in the Winterthur Museum & Country Estate in Delaware.

The museum will also present the quilt designed in 1987 by AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin honoring Milwaukee residents who died from AIDS. The NAMES Project Foundation AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on view June 8 through June 20.