annieb123's Review of Deeds not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women's Suffrage

by Sandra Sider and Pamela Weeks

An unusually creative honoring of the 19th Amendment's centennial—it was ratified August 18, 1920. Twenty-nine award-winning textile artists from across the United States each crafted a quilt celebrating women’s suffrage. These dazzlingly varied, sometimes troubling, always inspiring artworks reflect the long and continuing fight for equal rights for all. Introductions summarize the history of women’s suffrage, an even more complicated subject than you might think, then dozens of art quilts continue the learning. Male artists are included to acknowledge the support of many men for women’s suffrage, and African American artists and suffragists are recognized as well. Although the 19th Amendment made a huge stride forward for women’s rights, in many voting situations that right extended to white women only because of prejudicial practices. All royalties will be shared equally between the New England Quilt Museum and Texas Quilt Museum.

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Deeds Not Words is a well curated exhibition catalogue and collection of quilt art pieces celebrating the centenary of the 19th amendment in the USA. Due out 28th March 2020 from Schiffer, it's 96 pages and will be available in hardcover format.

The actual exhibition is scheduled to travel to different locales from 2020-2022 and includes shows and dates to be announced. Despite a careful read-through, I've been unable to find a complete listing of dates and venues, but it seems to be in association with equilter.com.

The exhibit contains a short history of the women's suffrage movement, some rare antique pieces which reference women's suffrage, along with the contemporary pieces by 28 modern day quilt artists. Each of the entries contains an artist's statement and vision as well as a little bit of background and one or more color photos of each exhibition piece. The artists' pieces are as varied as they are and represent a full spectrum of points of view. It's amazing to me how far we've come in a scant century and how far we still need to go to approach equality.

This would make a nice coffee table book of inspiration for a fiber artist or quilter's home library.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

Deeds not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women's Suffrage

by Sandra Sider and Pamela Weeks

Reviewed by annieb123 on Mar 8, 2020

Reading updates