Layered Legacies: Quilts from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem

Layered Legacies invites audiences to consider the multilayered stories stitched into quilts made in the American South between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Featured are more than 30 bed coverings and related objects from the collection of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and Old Salem collections. 

Foregrounding the masterful artistry of women, these bed coverings are expressions of love, objects of exquisite craftsmanship, and material documents containing hidden stories of long-forgotten women, both white and Black, wealthy and enslaved, whose hands created and cared for these important textiles.​

Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art in partnership with the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website