PRESENTATION: Routed West-Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) presents “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California”, a landmark exhibition featuring more than one hundred quilts created by approximately eighty artists. This expansive presentation—the most comprehensive to date of a transformative 2019 bequest—offers a profound exploration of African American quiltmaking and its deep ties to histories of migration, memory, and cultural resilience.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: BAMPFA Archive
Drawn from the nearly three thousand African American quilts and several hundred unattributed works now housed at BAMPFA, “Routed West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California” illuminates the extraordinary scope of what is believed to be the largest collection of its kind in the world. The exhibition not only celebrates the artistry of these textiles but also represents a vital chapter in an ambitious, multi-year institutional initiative to research, conserve, and share this unparalleled collection. Alongside historic quilts, the exhibition features nearly a dozen contemporary works by Black quiltmakers from the Bay Area—including members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland—demonstrating the continued vitality of this tradition in the present day. At its heart, “Routed West” traces the intertwined histories of quiltmaking and the Second Great Migration, the mass movement of millions of African Americans from the South to other regions of the United States between the 1940s and 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of families made new homes in California, carrying with them not only quilts but also the cultural practices and communal values embedded in the craft. About one quarter of the quilts on view were completed in the South before 1950, while others emerged in California during the postwar years, when transplanted artists revitalized family traditions and adapted them to new environments. Collectively, these quilts embody a medium uniquely suited to preserving memory and ancestral knowledge—while also sustaining spiritual, familial, and communal ties across generations of Black life in the context of migration and diaspora. The exhibition is grounded in a monumental bequest from the estate of Eli Leon, a self-taught quilt scholar and collector who spent more than three decades assembling what became the world’s largest privately held collection of African American quilts. Leon championed both celebrated and overlooked quiltmakers, including National Heritage Fellows Gussie Wells and Laverne Brackens, as well as the renowned Rosie Lee Tompkins, whose work was the subject of an internationally acclaimed retrospective at BAMPFA in 2020. Upon his passing in 2018, Leon left the entirety of his collection to BAMPFA, a gift that now constitutes nearly one-fifth of the museum’s total holdings and fundamentally reshaped its institutional identity. Since receiving the bequest, BAMPFA has undertaken an unprecedented effort to steward the collection through cataloging, conservation, research, and exhibition. In 2020, the museum established a dedicated curatorial position supported by external funding, appointing art historian Dr. Elaine Yau to lead this work. A specialist in the intersections of folk and modern art with a PhD in History of Art from UC Berkeley, Dr. Yau has since guided the museum’s scholarship and curatorial vision for the collection. In 2024, she was appointed Associate Curator and Academic Liaison, ensuring the collection continues to be studied, exhibited, and contextualized for future generations.With “Routed West”, BAMPFA not only celebrates the extraordinary creativity of African American quiltmakers but also underscores the museum’s ongoing commitment to honoring, preserving, and amplifying the cultural legacies embedded in this historic art form.
Photo: Installation view: “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California”, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, June 8–November 30, 2025. Photo by Daria Lugina
Info: Curator: Elaine Y. Yau, Assistant Curator: Matthew Villar Miranda, The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), 2155 Center Street Berkeley, CA, USA, Duration: 8/6-30/11/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-19:00, https://bampfa.org/
