Many people would never expect to see an Amish quilt and a painting by an American abstract artist displayed together. However, since the 1970s, visual similarities have been recognised between the two. This has left us to wonder how art forms of such conflicting origins could possibly be connected.
In 1971, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened the exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts. Within this exhibition, alongside abstract textiles from all over America, was an Amish quilt. The exhibition received a remarkable response and it wasn’t long before quilts of different patterns and origins developed popularity with the public. People began to view them not just as household items but as works of art to be displayed. The affordability of the quilts was also appealing, as was their ability to be displayed on apartment walls just like a painting. It was with this new-found interest in quilts that comparisons started to be made, and it was concluded that Amish quilts looked like Modern Art.
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In the 1970s, one of the first substantial collections of Amish Quilts was established by collectors Jonathan Holstein and Gail Van der Hoof. Actively engaged in the New York art scene, Holstein and Van der Hoof had developed friendships with abstract artists Barnett Newman and Roy Liechtenstein. The collectors' interest in Amish quilts was clearly also a result of the textiles similarities to the work of artists they were associating with.
Although Amish Quilts may appear to have been ‘discovered’ by the art world and collectors in the 1970s, quiltmaking actually began in Amish communities in the 1880s. It is thought that the Amish took inspiration from their Pennsylvania German, English, Scots-Irish, Welsh and Quaker neighbours, who had already been quiltmaking for some time. Ultimately, the origin of Amish quilts couldn’t be further from the art scene in New York. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="2202"]






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