Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

June 8, 2025–November 30, 2025

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration through approximately one hundred quilts representing the work of eighty individuals, many of them women. It is the first group show drawn from a transformative bequest of African American quilts that the museum received in 2019.

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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.
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.
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 Chris Grunder.
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.
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.
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.

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
Objects
Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Events

Sunday, November 16, 1 PM
From the Estate of Eli Leon: Textile Improvisations

A presentation of new work created from the Eli Leon fabric collection by acclaimed artists Mansur Nurullah, Jasmine Nyende, and rel robinson, who will share their artwork and take part in a conversation about connecting with this storied material.

BAMPFA
Saturday, November 8, 11:30 AM
Gallery+Studio / Patching Our Stories Together: Family Lineage in Fabric

See quilts from four generations of one family on view in Routed West, and explore your own lineage in fabric and paper collage.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Sunday, November 2, 11 AM
Vision Access Guided Tour / Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

Join BAMPFA Education staff for a highly descriptive guided tour of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California. In a discussion enhanced by touch panels demonstrating a range of materials and techniques, we will discover the vibrant evolution of quiltmaking rooted in Southern Black traditions yet responsive to new lives forged in California.

BAMPFA
Saturday, October 25, 1:30–4:30 PM
Symposium: Gathering by the Motheroot

Join us for an afternoon of conversations with contemporary quiltmakers, scholars, curators, and artist-activists reflecting on African American quiltmaking as a present practice and an inheritance to steward for the future.

BAMPFA
Saturday, October 11, 11:30 AM
Gallery+Studio / Journey to the West (Art, Soul, and Spiritual Healing)

The artistic and spiritual values of the African American quiltmakers featured in Routed West are as central to their legacy as the quilts themselves. In this workshop, construct a quilt design expressing ideas of legacy and creative liberation.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Saturday, October 4, 4 PM
CANCELED: Exhibition Tour: Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

Graduate students from the Departments of Folklore, History of Art, and African American Studies offer tours of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California.

BAMPFA
Saturday, September 27, 2 PM
Stitching Words, Memory, Community

Poet and scholar Wendy M. Thompson, with artist Trina Michelle Robinson, presents an interactive discussion around the significance of textiles, fiber, words, and retrospection as forms of self-creation, connection, and resistance.

BAMPFA
Saturday, September 20, 1 PM
Artists’ Conversation: Quilts as Legacy and Living Practice

Artists Diedrick Brackens, Basil Kincaid, and Adia Millett join Key Jo Lee to discuss how the materiality of quilts—pieced, patched, and passed down—becomes a metaphor for survival, resistance, and boundless Black creativity.

BAMPFA
Sunday, September 14, 1 PM
Patchwork Doll Making with Violette Alby and Eliza Fernand

Taking inspiration from the exhibition Routed West and from dolls everywhere, participants will make their own improvisational doll using DIY iron-on appliqué, hand sewing, and their imagination

BAMPFA

Space is limited; RSVP required
Saturday, September 13, 11:30 AM
Gallery+Studio / Personal Landscape Quilt Blocks

Make an expressive personal landscape in the form of a quilt block with someone in your family.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Sunday, September 7, 12–4 PM
Fabric Postcards with AAQGO

Make and take fabric art on a postcard with members of the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland, who will provide instruction and materials. During your visit, check out some of their work, on view in Routed West.

BAMPFA

Drop-in event!
Selected Wednesdays, Sundays, and First Free Thursdays
Exhibition Tour: Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

Graduate students from the Departments of Folklore, History of Art, and African American Studies offer tours of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California. See calendar for upcoming dates

BAMPFA
Sunday, August 31, 1 PM
Bundle Dyeing with Summer Flowers

Join local artist Melinda Supanee Katz for a magical class exploring color, repetition, and abstraction through the process of bundle dyeing silk with flowers and steam.

BAMPFA
Sunday, July 27, 1 PM
Improvisational Quilt Print Workshop

Join artist Matt Katsaros for an afternoon of improvisational quiltmaking through the lens of collage and risograph printing.

BAMPFA
Saturday, July 12, 11:30 AM–1 PM
Gallery+Studio / Mixed-Media Posters: United We Win!

Make a quilt-inspired mixed-media poster celebrating Bay Area history.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Sunday, June 29, 1 PM
Fabric Postcard Workshop

Discover the joy of working with fabric and thread and create your own miniature quilt!

BAMPFA
Saturday, June 28, 12–4 PM
Quilt Documentation Day

Preserve your African American family history with the African American Quilt Documentation Study Group. Bring in your family quilt to be documented in the national African American Quilt Registry.

BAMPFA

Advance registration required
Sunday, June 22, 2 PM; Thursday, July 3, 1:15 PM; Thursday, October 2, 1:15 PM
Curator's Tour: Elaine Yau on Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

BAMPFA Associate Curator and Academic Liaison Elaine Yau shares in-depth stories of individual quilts in the exhibition that illuminate the bonds of love, kinship, commemoration, and innovative artistry entwined in their making.

BAMPFA
Saturday, June 14, 11:30 AM–1 PM
Gallery+Studio / Family and Community Quiltmaking

Learn how fabrics migrate from one use to another and end up as quilts, and make a unique quilt square of your own.

BAMPFA

For ages 6–12 with accompanying adult(s)
Sunday, June 8, 11 AM–7 PM
Free Community Day: Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

Join us for the opening day of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California with free gallery admission for all!

BAMPFA

Free admission all day
Sunday, June 8, 11:30 AM–2 PM
Art Making for All Ages

Drop in and make art in BAMPFA’s Crane Forum space, next to the Art Wall. Materials will be provided.

BAMPFA
Sunday, June 8, 2:30 PM
Curator's Welcome: Routed West

To celebrate the opening of Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California, BAMPFA Associate Curator and Academic Liaison Elaine Yau offers a brief overview of the exhibition and shares the journey of organizing the show from over three thousand quilts in the museum collection.

BAMPFA
Saturday, June 7, 1–7 PM
Preview Day: Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

BAMPFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff are invited to enjoy early access to the exhibition Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California.

BAMPFA

For BAMPFA members and UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff.

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

Closing Soon!

June 8, 2025–November 30, 2025

Get Tickets

You can also purchase gallery tickets in person at our admissions desk.

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration. As millions of African Americans sought greater opportunities and escape from the South’s oppressive racial environment from 1940 to 1970, they carried quilts as functional objects and physical reminders of the homes they left behind. Simultaneously, the quiltmaking skills that many migrants brought with them—frequently learned from mothers, grandmothers, and other kin—spurred the creation of a new wave of African American quiltmaking in the later part of the twentieth century, extending its roots into the Western United...

Get Tickets

You can also purchase gallery tickets in person at our admissions desk.

Consisting of one hundred artworks representing nearly eighty individuals—many of them women with ties to the Bay Area—and recent works by local Black quilt artists, Routed West honors quiltmakers of this distinctive migrant generation and those who carry forth their aesthetic and cultural legacies. It is the first group exhibition of artworks drawn from the African American quilt collection at BAMPFA. Enhanced by a fully illustrated exhibition catalog with significant new scholarship, the exhibition invites audiences into a conversation around the quilts’ joyful power as objects of African American cultural heritage and artworks within expansive histories of art in the United States.

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Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California is curated by Elaine Y. Yau, Associate Curator and Academic Liaison, with Matthew Villar Miranda, Curatorial Associate.

The Henry Luce Foundation has provided generous lead support for the exhibition and accompanying catalog. Major exhibition support is provided by the Shah Garg Women Artists Research Fund, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the National Endowment for the Arts, the San Francisco Foundation, and the Flora Family Foundation. The exhibition is also supported by generous gifts from an Anonymous Donor; Shannon Jackson; Black Studies Collaboratory at UC Berkeley, an awardee of the Mellon Foundation's Just Futures Initiative; Diedrick Brackens, Brenda and Michael Drake; Barbara Kimport; and Catherine and James Koshland.

Funding for the conservation of the quilt collection was generously provided by Angela and David Filo; a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Save America’s Treasures program of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Office of the Chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California

June 8, 2025–November 30, 2025

Upcoming Events

Past Events

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