African Americans carried many things with them when fleeing the South’s oppression and poverty in the middle of the 20th Century – a movement of millions called the Second Great Migration. Among the possessions were often quilts, handmade items handed down for generations imbued with stories of love, grief, ancestral and spiritual respect.
It so happens that thanks to a bequest in 2019, the world’s largest collection of African-American quilts sits in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Now the museum is bringing out more than 100 of them for their first public viewing, in an exhibit titled “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California.”
The exhibit “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California” runs until Nov. 30, 2025, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif. (Kevin Candland/BAMPFA)
The show presents quilts of historic significance that found their way West to the supposed promised land, some fabricated by famous artisans and others by unknown hands – and for a local twist, roughly a dozen made by contemporary Black artists in the Bay Area including the African American Quilt Guild of Oakland.
The exhibit “Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California” runs until Nov. 30, 2025, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, Calif. (Kevin Candland/BAMPFA)
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“[Routed West] honors quiltmakers of this distinctive migrant generation and those who carry forth their aesthetic and cultural legacies,” writes the museum. If you’ve only thought of a quilt as something that keeps you warm on a winter’s day, this one’s sure to be an eye-opener.
Details: Show is open 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday until November 30, 2025, at 2155 Center St., Berkeley; $18 general admission, bampfa.org.