Quilts & Color at MFA Boston!

Quilts and Color: The Pilgrim/Roy Collection is the first to explore how, over five decades, trained artists Paul Pilgrim and Gerald Roy acquired quilts with bold, eye-popping designs that echo the work of mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist and Op Artists. It looks at their collecting - how they started in the 60s, at the forefront of looking at quilts as art -- and how they amassed one of the best collections in the world, full of unique quilts that are outside of the mainstream.  http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/quilts-and-color


This spring, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), will present Quilts and Color, an exhibition that celebrates the vibrant color palette and inventive design of the acclaimed Pilgrim/Roy Quilt Collection. Both trained artists, Paul Pilgrim and Gerald Roy acquired quilts with bold and eye-popping designs that echoed the work of mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist and Op Artists.

The exhibition opens with the vividly colored quilts that first drew the collectors’ attention and began their life-long passion. Exploring sophisticated principles of color theory, the exhibition’s opening sections display color vibrations, mixtures, gradations and harmonies in the design of the quilts ranging from the 19th to early 20th century. As their collection grew, Pilgrim and Roy turned their interest to the history of quilting and added more conventional designs. Many of these incorporated the color white to create high contrast, an effect that also plays an important role in the visual power of pieced quilts and the organization of their blocks or patterns. The exhibition’s sections—“Contrast” and “Optical Illusions”—examine this aspect of quilting in the dramatic color choices and innovative effects created within established patterns. The exhibition concludes with a final nod to the artistic vision of quilt makers and highlights artists who worked outside of standard patterns and design and applied color in inventive and striking fashion.