The exhibition 'Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in California' will run from September 18, 2026, to January 17, 2027, at BAMPFA. It traces the flow and flourishing of quilts during the Second Great Migration (1940–1970), when approximately five million African Americans moved from the rural South to the North and West, with hundreds of thousands arriving in California carrying quilts as containers of ancestral memory and cultural survival. The show features more than 80 artworks organized across several themes, highlighting repurposed work clothes, improvisational piecing, and pattern-based quilting by migrants from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. Works by contemporary artists show how these traditions remain alive today.
This exhibition matters because it reframes quilts as vital art objects and historical documents, centering the creative labor of African American women and working-class makers often overlooked by mainstream art history. By connecting craft to the broader narrative of the Second Great Migration, 'Routed West' underscores how quilting served as a meditative, liberating practice and a means of preserving family and community heritage. The show is part of the museum’s participation in Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, an initiative by Craft in America, linking local history to a national celebration of craft.