iNational Museum of Women in the ArtsDowntown
Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California
Over 80 quilts trace the Second Great Migration west, carried as warmth, ancestral memory and emblems of cultural survival by Black families settling in California.
More in Washington, DC
Annie Crawford's puff quilt is built from 540 small cotton tobacco sacks, washed, dyed and stuffed over seven years in Call, Texas. Seven years on one quilt makes your abandoned Duolingo streak look casual.
The show gathers more than 80 quilted objects by over 70 makers across 120 years, drawn from the African American Quilt Collection at Berkeley's BAMPFA, plus contemporary Bay Area work. It follows the Second Great Migration, roughly 1940 to 1970, when about five million Black Americans left the South, many for California. Curator Elaine Y. Yau says quilts "have thrived apart from art museums", so the show tries to follow the ethics of care they live by in Black communities.
It is on the second floor, open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm, until 17 January 2027. Admission is $16, and free on the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month. Hand-stitching (10 October) and appliqué (14 November) workshops run alongside.
Editor's pick
Annie Crawford's puff quilt is made from 540 tobacco sacks. It hangs among more than 80 quilts by Black makers in California, a story of the Second Great Migration told in fabric, from Berkeley's BAMPFA collection.
Look for
Annie Crawford's tobacco-sack puff quilt
A hand-pieced quilt of 540 small cotton tobacco sacks, made in Texas between 1933 and 1940.
Alice Neal's Mary Bright Commemorative Quilt
A portrait of her mother at the centre, ringed by Dresden Plate, Fan and Star of Lemoyne blocks, with lace collar, buttons and a removable replica hat.
Hattie Mitchell's appliqué with embroidery
Leaf patterns gathered on a 1906 family trip to France, with embroidered place names, hand-appliquéd on a 96-inch cotton quilt.
Cultural Merger at Crossroads, USA
A 1990 quilt by Sherry Ann Byrd and Irene Bankhead, pieced from cotton, polyester and rayon in Richmond and Oakland, California.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
With kids
Visitors aged 21 and under get in free.
Free in the same building
Plan a visit to National Museum of Women in the ArtsAlso at National Museum of Women in the Arts
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in CaliforniaBequest of the Eli Leon Living Trust, BAMPFA; Courtesy of Sherry Ann Byrd; Photo by Kevin Candland
- Shahzia Sikander: The Last Post© 2025 Shahzia Sikander, courtesy the artist and Sean Kelly; Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Nick Cave: Mammoth© Nick Cave; photo by Ron Blunt Studio, courtesy Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial© 1975 Ted Wathen; Smithsonian American Art Museum, transfer from the National Endowment for the Arts
- National Museum of Women in the Artsajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Smithsonian American Art MuseumFrogvixen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Portrait GalleryDifference engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Renwick GalleryIngfbruno / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- National Archives MuseumDavid Samuel (Hellodavey1902) via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0