HOUSTON, TX.- Following the great success of The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, an exhibition of stunningly original works by the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama that was organized and premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2002, the MFAH and co-organizer Tinwood Alliance will present Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, opening in Houston June 4, 2006. The first exhibition, which will complete its four-year tour of 11 museums in November 2006, introduced audiences to the creations of four generations of women whose work more closely resembles modernist abstract paintings than traditional quilts, inspiring New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman to call them “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt examines the resurgence of interest in quilting in the Gee’s Bend community and will document the development of key traditional quilt patterns—housetop, courthouse steps, flying geese, and strip quilting through the presentation of outstanding examples created from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. The exhibition will be on view at the MFAH’s Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main Street, through September 4, 2006, and then will begin a seven-city tour of well-known American museums.

“The women of Gee’s Bend are at long-last getting the recognition they deserve as artists, and that is especially gratifying to the museum,” said Peter C. Marzio, director of the MFAH. “Their command of materials and design is genius; their body of work, further distinguished by its historical and cultural significance, is clearly a facet of contemporary American art. With Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, the museum hopes to bring this story to those who have not yet seen it and to deepen the appreciation of those who have.”

“Women in Gee’s Bend learned the craft of quilting from their mothers and grandmothers,” said Alvia J. Wardlaw, MFAH curator of modern and contemporary art, who is organizing the exhibition. “It was a skill born of necessity and make-do conditions, but they transformed quilt making – this chore – into the highest form of artistic _expression, where innovation and individuality were prized. Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt will explore how the artists improvised on certain traditional motifs and trace the family quilting lineage of some master quilters.”

The 70 quilts in the exhibition, none previously presented to the public, will demonstrate how the quilters improvise upon the structure or “architecture” of the quilt to create a work of art that is based upon a traditional quilt pattern while simultaneously creating a visual vocabulary that is stylistically identifiable as Gee’s Bend. Each pattern will be examined with visual examples detailing various interpretations. New works by granddaughters and great-granddaughters of some of the master quilt makers will be shown, along with quilts not previously exhibited by quilt makers Mary Lee Bendolph and Mary L. Bennett.

This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Tinwood Alliance, Atlanta. Generous funding in Houston is provided by The James R. Crane Foundation, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, and Beth Robertson. Transportation for Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt is provided by EGL Eagle Global Logistics.

Accompanying the exhibition is an extensive catalogue by Bernard Herman, director of the Center for American Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. In his catalogue essay, Herman compares the works in the exhibition to the structured compositions of both Piet Mondrian and Esther Mahlangu, a Ndebele house painter from South Africa. Other catalogue contributors include Lauren Whitley, Dilys Blum, Diane Mott, Joanne Cubbs, and Maggie Gordon.