SHELBURNE, VT.- Shelburne Museum presents 20 textile masterpieces dating from the first decades of the 1800s to the turn of the 21st century in the newest online exhibition, Pattern & Purpose: American Quilts from Shelburne Museum. The online exhibition opened Thursday, January 28.

“Pattern & Purpose explores objects that expand our sense of what art can be, and recognize how invention and discovery can be found in the most familiar of places,” said Associate Curator Katie Wood Kirchhoff who organized the exhibition. “Today, quilt-making is recognized as an art form in its own right, revealing makers’ skills and personal visions from complex geometric designs that would feel at home in a gallery of pop art to delicate and timeless patterns drawn from nature.”

Fascinated by design elements of color, pattern, line, and construction, and eager to recover a quintessentially “American” form of material culture, Shelburne Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960) was one of the first to exhibit quilts as works of art in a museum setting. Mrs. Webb established the nucleus of Shelburne’s collection with over 400 historic bedcoverings in the 1950s. Today, Shelburne is known internationally for the exceptional variety and quality of its collection, which is particularly strong in its holdings from 19th-century Vermont and New England.

In celebration of the exhibition the public is invited to a webinar with Kirchhoff and special guests Minnie Wabanimkee, Odawa artist and photographer, from Peshawbestown, Michigan, and Professor of Art and Curator of Folk Arts and Quilt Studies Marsha MacDowell from Michigan State University. The conversation will center on the Odawa bedcover in the museum’s permanent collection. One of at least six identified Odawa quilts created in Peshawbestown, the discussion will include insights from Minnie and Marsha about these distinctive bedcovers. In addition, the guests will highlight The Quilt Index, an incredible digital resource that can be explored online. The webinar is at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 3.

Additional program offerings include a Virtual Quilt Club where participants will learn about quilts featured in the upcoming Pattern & Purpose online exhibition, discover quilting tips and tricks, and create hand or machine quilted coasters.

Pattern & Purpose marks the twelfth online exhibition presented by the museum since the COVID-19 pandemic altered operations. While Shelburne Museum is temporarily closed, the museum continues its commitment to deliver the museum experience digitally through new and upcoming online exhibitions, virtual field trips, and public programs.