Quilt Exhibit at Berkeley Museum Chronicles Black Lives in California

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Old jeans. Worn shirts. Scraps from flour sacks and homemade dresses. Nothing is too humble for a quilt. In BAMPFA’s new exhibit “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California,” quilts tell the story of resilience, family, and cultural continuity. The exhibit highlights the quiltmaking skills that many migrants brought with them in the Second Great Migration from 1940-1970—and passed on to their children and other kin, spurring the creation of a new wave of African American quiltmaking. We’ll talk to the curator and a contemporary quiltmaker in Oakland about the exhibit. Guests: Ora Clay, member, African American Quilt Guild of Oakland Elaine Yau, associate curator and academic liaison, BAMPFA – Yau curated the exhibit "Routed West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQED podcast comes from Save the Bay, protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay for over 60 years.
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0:14.3	More at SaveSFBay.org.
0:16.7	Greetings Boomtown.
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0:33.1	From KQED.
0:49.4	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. In the years surrounding World War II, many black families migrated from the western
0:53.9	parts of the south, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and made their way to Northern California to work in the industries that ring the Bay.
1:02.9	They brought their art and folkways with them infusing the Bay Area with African American traditions.
1:09.8	There's no better example of this cultural innovation and continuity than the quilts on display
1:15.9	in a new exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum titled Routing West.
1:20.4	These quilts are more than fabric.
1:21.9	They are the material manifestation of history, resilience, and family.
1:25.8	We'll talk all about the exhibit right after this news.
1:37.7	Welcome to Forum.
1:39.0	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
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