From the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive​: "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. The quilts in this exhibition explore the medium’s unique capacity for connecting kin across time and distance, holding memory and ancestral knowledge, and opening up space for beauty and artistic ingenuity."

Presented by the Quilt Alliance: "When the prolific quilt collector Eli Leon died, he left instructions for his massive collection of 3,000 quilts and tops to be donated to the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. His collection is like no other collection in the world – all 3,000 quilts were made by African American quilters, including the famed artist, Rosie Lee Tompkins. When the quilts eventually made their way to BAMPFA, it became Associate Curator and Academic Liaison Elaine Yau’s job to oversee the collection. Author and quilt historian Teresa Duryea Wong will interview Elaine about the collection and the inside story of how one mid-size museum became a major holder of thousands of African American quilts seemingly overnight.​​" Register today and watch when this episode airs this Wednesday, September 18, 2024, at 2 PM EDT.