Kentucky Museum News

The Kentucky Museum at WKU has opened a new exhibit, Stitches in Time: 200 Years of Kentucky Quilts, showcasing thirty of the finest quilts in its collection.

Stitches in Time includes traditional and art quilts ranging in age from the early 19th century to the early 21st century. Quilts on view include a whitework masterpiece made by President George Washington's niece-in-law; a 66,000-piece quilt made by an immigrant from New Zealand in the 1930s; quilts with portraits of Henry Clay and Father Thomas Merton; and several textiles associated with Florence Peto, a leading figure in the second twentieth century quilt revival.

The exhibition is the result of extensive research, evaluation, and digitization of the Museum’s more than 330-object quilt collection, which was funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. Led by Collections Curator/Registrar Sandy Staebell, Term Assistant Curator of Folk Art Jackson Medel, and eminent quilt scholar Laurel M. Horton, the project examined the collection chronologically, updating each record with detailed descriptions and provenance information.

“Happily, we also were able to fund graduate assistants and interns in the context of the Luce grant,” stated Medel, “giving three graduate students from the Folk Studies program the crucial opportunity to get hands-on work in collections, object transportation, cataloging, provenance work, object processing, photography, and more. These kinds of opportunities are critical to the academic and professional development of students as they enter their fields.”

Following evaluation, a grant from the Quilter’s Guild of Dallas partially underwrote the examination and treatment of twenty of the quilts in the exhibition. The quilts were conserved by long-term colleague, scholar, and expert textile conservator Dr. Margaret Ordonez.

When asked to describe Stitches in Time, Sandy Staebell replied that “These quilts and their foundational place in the museum’s collection represent a fulfillment of the original vision of the museum – for Kentuckians to know Kentucky – and continues our tradition of communal contribution to the representation of Kentucky history.”

Stitches in Time is on view now through July 27, 2025. The Kentucky Museum is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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About the Kentucky Museum

Founded in 1939, the Kentucky Museum is a teaching institution with premier cultural collections that complement, support, and challenge the academic experiences of WKU students, faculty and staff. It also provides a gathering place for our campus and community to come to know and celebrate who they are as individuals and as Kentuckians in the 21st century. The Museum serves Kentuckians and visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections research. As a history and cultural museum concerned with meanings, narratives and associations, its collections offer multiple opportunities to explore and interpret history and culture as well as discover how Kentuckians have shaped and been shaped by local, state, regional, national, and global influences over the last two-and-a-half centuries.

For more information, contact Exhibitions Curator and Development Manager, Tiffany Isselhardt, at tiffany.isselhardt@wku.edu.