Kentucky Museum News

The Kentucky Museum has launched a new crowdfunding initiative that is raising funds to help care and conserve the Museum’s beloved collection of over 330 historic and contemporary quilts. The Adopt-a-Quilt campaign invites campus and community members, along with quilters and quilt admirers across the world, to symbolically adopt individual quilts in the collection through monetary donations.

“Among the most exhibited, research, and utilized of our collections, each of these quilts holds a story about Kentuckians and our links to the world beyond our Commonwealth,” stated Tiffany Isselhardt, the Museum’s Exhibits Curator and Development Coordinator. “When I joined the Museum five years ago, I knew almost nothing about quilts and quilt-making. Today, I can confidently say that this collection has given me a deep appreciation for the role that textiles play in our everyday lives – and for the stories that fabrics, from simple stitches to the most complicated crazy quilts, can tell.”

To uncover those stories, preservation is crucial. This campaign will help care for the 330-plus quilts, whose size and composition require special storage materials and periodic evaluation and treatment to ensure they remain in the best possible condition for research and exhibition.

Through the Adopt-a-Quilt program, individuals or groups can symbolically “adopt” a quilt by providing a monetary donation. Their adoption is recognized through online and in-exhibit labels as well as a customized adoption certificate. The funds are utilized by the Museum to purchase quilt storage supplies, such as boxes and tissue, as well as build the Museum’s dedicated Collections Endowment.

Adoptions can be made online now at https://www.wku.edu/kentuckymuseum/adoptaquilt.php

About 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.