Marin F. Hanson – författare

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has remarked, "Much of the social history of early America has been lost to us precisely because women were expected to use needles rather than pens." This book, part of the multivolume series of the International Quilt Study Center collections, recovers a swath of that lost history and shows us some of America's treasured material culture as it was pieced and stitched into place.  American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870–1940 examines the period's quilts from both an artistic and a historical perspective. From pieced block to Crazy style to Colonial Revival examples, as well as one-of-a-kind creations, the full array of style and design appears in this book covering seven decades of quiltmaking. The contributing authors provide critical information regarding the modern and anti-modern tensions that persisted throughout this era of America's coming of age, from the Civil War to World War II. They also address the textile technology and cultural context of the times in which the quilts were created, with an eye to the role that industrialization and modernization played in the evolution of techniques, materials, and designs. With full-color photographs of over 587 quilts, American Quilts in the Modern Age, 1870-1940 offers a new visual and tactile understanding of American culture and society, bridging the transition from traditional folk culture to the age of mass production and consumption.

Fifty years after its debut, the exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts is remembered as a pivotal moment in the intersecting histories of art, craft, and design. Installed at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, the exhibition presented traditional American pieced quilts on walls more commonly used to display modern art such as abstract expressionist paintings. The exhibition, curated by Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof from their own collection, unexpectedly struck a chord with museumgoers and art critics alike, breaking attendance records and subsequently traveling to museums across the United States, Europe, and Japan.With Abstract Design in American Quilts at 50, an exhibition series that includes an installation of the original quilt group, the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln reexamines the half-century impact of this watershed exhibition. In five essays, leading quilt scholars assess the areas upon which the exhibition, in its various iterations, had its greatest impact, most notably the growth of quiltmaking across the United States and in art circles. The essays also discuss broader cultural phenomena that produced an environment in which quilts and other forms of material culture could be viewed and valued in new ways.