Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Dr, St. Louis, MO, 63110, United States: Quilts and Coverlets: American Needlework in White

Focusing on 19th-century works, Quilts and Coverlets: American Needlework in White presents superlative whitework textiles, which are characterized by embroidery done in white thread on white fabric. In the U.S., whitework was predominantly practiced by women who not only had ample time and superb skill but who also enjoyed the means to carefully select and purchase lengths of pristine cotton cloth.

This exhibition features whitework bedcoverings in the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection produced at the height of American neoclassicism from the early to mid-1800s. Accompanied by ceramics, printed fabrics and needlework, these exemplary quilts and coverlets reveal a tightly woven landscape of craft, labor and authorship.

While uncovering the cultures, motifs and techniques of whitework embroidery, this exhibition investigates the material significance of cotton as the product of a transatlantic textile trade, which boomed alongside American plantation slavery, and connects to the pale aesthetics of neoclassicism. Monochromatic and intricately textured, the presentation poses the question: What histories remain visible in needlework done in white on white?