The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is opening "Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California" on June 8, the first major museum survey of its vast African American quilt collection. The collection, bequeathed by Oakland collector Eli Leon in 2018, includes over 3,000 quilts, with 100 featured in the exhibition. The show focuses on migration during the Second Great Migration (1940–1970) and highlights artists like National Heritage Fellow Laverne Brackens, Rosie Lee Tompkins, and Arbie Williams, alongside multi-generational quilting families. The exhibition opens despite recent federal funding cuts for conservation work on the quilts.
This exhibition matters because it positions BAMPFA as the world's preeminent institutional holder of African American quilts, a historically underrecognized art form. The show brings scholarly attention to artists whose names have often been lost, and it underscores the cultural significance of Black quiltmaking as a vehicle for storytelling, migration history, and intergenerational creativity. The funding cuts highlight ongoing challenges for museums in preserving and presenting marginalized art traditions, making the exhibition's realization a testament to institutional commitment and community resilience.