Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in Washington, DC

Routed West traces the flow and flourishing of quilts in the context of the Second Great Migration, a mass movement of approximately five million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West between 1940 and 1970 in search of a more equitable life. Many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrived in California carried quilts for warmth and protection, as containers for ancestral memory, and as emblems of cultural survival.

Organized across several themes through nearly 80 artworks with kaleidoscopic patterns, colors, and forms, Routed West offers a history of art through quilts’ joyful power in Black life. The quilts in the exhibition highlight artistic approaches such as repurposing work clothes, improvisational piecing, pattern-based quilting, and tying, practiced by those who would carry these works out of the South. Quilts by migrants from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, regions heavily represented in the westward movement of African Americans, reflect the ways in which these works become cherished heirlooms.

As teachers, nurses, seamstresses, truck drivers, grocery store managers, shipyard workers, and other members of a laboring class, a number of artists used quilt-making to reclaim time for themselves, pursuing creative labor that could be meditative, centering, and liberating. Many of the quilts showcase the work of multiple generations of quiltmakers within families, while works by contemporary artists illustrate the ways they keep traditions of African American quilting alive today. The exhibition is part of the museum’s multi-faceted participation in Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, an initiative of Craft in America.