Homefront and Battlefield Exhibit Travels to New York

Made for “AK” in Pennsylvania by an unidentified quiltmaker, this textile from the Homefront and Battlefield exhibit illustrates the life of a Zouave soldier. It includes fabrics used by seamstresses at the Schuylkill Arsenal in Philadelphia to make Zouave uniforms. “AK” may have been Adam Keller or Albert Keen, both of whom served with the 88th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, which boasted two companies of Zouaves. Collection of Kelly Kinzle.

Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War, the 2013 exhibit curated by Lynn Z. Bassett and Madelyn Shaw and organized by the American Textile History Museum,will travel to the New York Historical Society Museum and Library in New York City.

The show will be up April 4, 2014 through August 24, 2014.

http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/homefront-battlefield-quilts-context-civil-war

Also in the exhibit, a Union shawl presented to Massachusetts Governor Henry Andrew in 1861, loaned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. See more here:

http://www.masshist.org/blog/574

Lynne Zacek Bassett and Madelyn Shaw, co-authors of

 Homefront & Battlefield, with ATHM President Jonathan Stevens and 

Diane Fagan Affleck, Homefront & Battlefield Project Director

The American Textile History Museum (ATHM) was awarded a bronze medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards for the U.S. History category for Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts & Context in the Civil War, the book that catalogs the show and examines how textiles were both an expression of and a motivating force behind American politics and culture during the Civil War.

The next two venues for the exhibit:
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT, September 20, 2014 – January 1, 2015; and the Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE, February 1, - June 30, 2015.

Read more about the book award here:
http://www.athm.org/about_us/news/ATHM-earns-independent-publishing-award.php