Frist Art Museum Presents FABRIC OF A NATION: AMERICAN QUILT STORIES

The Frist Art Museum will present Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, an exhibition that celebrates aesthetic and technical achievements in quilting as well as the lives of their makers. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Fabric of a Nation will be on view in the Frist’s Upper-Level Galleries from June 27 through October 12, 2025.

Featuring nearly 50 exceptional quilts and coverlets drawn from the MFA’s premier textile collection, the exhibition demonstrates how this art form, considered timeless and democratic by many, has evolved over more than 300 years in the United States and continues to develop today. Made by a diversity of artistic hands and minds, many underrecognized, the medium offers an opportunity to tell an array of rich stories within our shared and complicated history from the 18th century up to 2021.

Long admired for their utility, beauty, and design, as well as the sense of community they inspire, quilts have also taken on different purposes and meanings throughout history. First used to provide warmth and comfort as decorative bedcovers, quilts gained greater public visibility in the mid-19th century as makers began to see themselves as textile artists. “Today, quilters have expanded the medium to encompass a wide range of techniques, materials, and imagery,” writes Frist Art Museum Senior Curator Katie Delmez. “And some contemporary artists are using the quilt form to bring attention to social justice issues and to address difficult moments from the nation’s past and present. But all of the works in this show share one essential characteristic—the power to tell stories.”

In conversation with Fabric of a Nation, three contemporary textile works by Nashville-based artists Shabazz and Ashley Larkin will be on display in an adjacent space as part of the Frist’s Art in the Atrium series. The works share personal stories related to their own family—the joining of lives and communities through marriage as well as the transmission of values and traditions from parents to children—and offer a reflection on the vulnerable position of Black men in the United States.

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