Update on Feb. 14: The Healing Arts Program curator talk scheduled for Thursday, Feb. 16, has been cancelled.
UNMC’s Healing Arts Program will host a curator talk and gallery reception with Carolyn Ducey, PhD, Ardis B. James Curator of Collections from the International Quilt Museum at the University Of Nebraska-Lincoln, on the exhibit “Amish Quilts: Objects of Modern Art” on Feb. 16.
The curator talk will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Gail and Mike Yanney Conference Center on the first floor of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center. The gallery viewing and a reception will follow in the main dining room.
The International Quilt Museum holds the most significant and comprehensive collection of Amish quilts in the world, and Dr. Ducey will speak on the remarkable similarities between quilts and modern art.
In the 1970s, Amish quilts became “cult objects” when art enthusiasts began comparing them to abstract modernist paintings. Amish quilts seem modern in spirit because of their extraordinary scale and geometry and also because their large, single-color areas evoke comparisons with the color field paintings of such abstract expressionist artists as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Jules Olitski.
Ducey will discuss these works that were created not as an artistic choice but constrained by the cultural bias against artistic experimentation.
“Amish Quilts: Objects of Modern Art” is on view at the cancer center during regular visiting hours, 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., through Feb. 26. Admission is free. RSVP and questions to Amy Jenson.