How Important is a Label?

This stunning quilt came to the museum recently as one of ten offered to the Museum by someone who had cleaned out an estate in nearby Plainview, Texas.  The first thing the donor said on the phone was that the quilts were "dirty”—not a good thing for a museum without a conservator on staff.  The second thing she said was that they all came with “stories.”  What she meant was that almost every quilt had a label attached documenting who made it and where.  Labels trump any dirt in a curator’s mind!