Kentucky Museum News

The Kentucky Museum at Western Kentucky University has received a $37,411 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Inspire! Grants for Small Museums program. One of 218 projects selected from across the country to receive funding, the Kentucky Museum is the only successful application in Kentucky program-wide to receive an IMLS Inspire! grant. 

"It is a great honor to receive this Inspire! Grant from such an important federal partner," shared Brent Bjorkman, Director of the Kentucky Museum. "As a trusted repository of Kentucky's quilt heritage, we are greatful to IMLS for their support in further upgrading the care we give to this nationally significant collection."

The grant will be used to rehouse 126 quilts within the Museum's 336-object Historic Quilt collection. These quilts are currently stored on rolled tubes, which require several team members to unroll. As part of the project, Museum staff will construct mobile shelving units, capable of holding up to 14 boxes each. This will provide safe housing for the quilts and facilitate easier access to the collections for staff and researchers. The project also provides a proof of concept to secure greater funding for future collections rehousing projects and increase access to the collections. 

The Kentucky Museum's Historic Quilt collection contains over 300 examples of everyday textiles from the late 18th to early 21st centuries, which were handled by individuals and have contemporary iterations and parallels. The collection is among the most exhibited, researched, and utilized at the Museum, and is the spotlight of the much-anticipated exhibition, Stitches in Time, which opens September 1.

Recently evaluated and digitized through funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Historic Quilt collection has been part of numerous faculty, student, and independent research projects. The information and images gathered as part of research is often put to commercial and non-commercial uses, including reproductions in books, magazines, and professional presentations as well as inclusion on websites. These include Kentucky Quilts and Quiltmakers: Three Centuries of Creativity, Community and Commerce by Dr. Linda LaPinta (University Press of Kentucky, Spring 2023); QuiltFolk magazine, October 2019; Whitework exhibition catalog by Laural McKay Horton, Dr. Margaret Ordonez, and Dr. Kate Brown; “Quilts as Expressions of Community” at Monroe County Quilt Days (June 2022); and featured presentations given to the Creative Quilters (October 2022 and September 2021) and the Piecemakers Quilt Guild of Lawrenceburg, Kentucky (September 2021). Additionally, the collection will be highlighted in the 2023 American Quilt Study Guild conference to be held in Louisville, Kentucky. 

About Stitches in Time

Showcasing thirty of the finest quilts in the Kentucky Museum 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. 

About the Kentucky Museum

The Kentucky Museum celebrates all aspects of southcentral Kentucky’s art, history and culture. “Kentuckians need to know Kentucky” was the Museum’s earliest conceptual framework, which took shape under WKU’s founding President, Dr. Henry Hardin Cherry. Today, the Museum is a steadfast educational campus partner helping to inspire innovation, elevate community and transform the lives of WKU students and the region. To learn more, visit wku.edu/kentuckymuseum/

For more information, contact Tiffany Isselhardt at (270) 745-3369.