Gee's Bend Quilts From Alabama Now On Display In Upstate New York

Forbes

28-07-2025

The Spencertown Academy and Austerlitz Historical Society Church, in Columbia County, N.Y., are presenting an exhibition of the famous Gee's Bend quilts.
Gee's Bend quit exhibition, on display through August 3 at Spencertown Academy Arts Center Peter Blandori
Gee;s End QyuiOn display through August 3, this exhibit features over 30 quilts created by six quiltmakers; second and third generation descendants of the celebrated Alabama women whose works exploded on the art scene in 2003. It is the first time these quilts have traveled outside of their community in recent years for such a major exhibition.
According to the academy, 'the small community of Gee's Bend, Alabama, has been creating their extraordinary quilts since the 1800's. . .These quilts constitute a crucial chapter in American art. Gee's Bend quilts are today in the permanent collection of over 30 leading art museums around the world.
'When enslaved women from the rural, isolated community of Boykin, Alabama—better known as Gee's Bend—began quilting in the 19th century, it arose from a physical need for warmth rather than a quest to reinvent an art form. Yet by piecing together scraps of fabric and clothing, they were creating abstract designs that had never before been expressed on quilts. These patterns and piecing styles were passed down over generations, surviving slavery, the antebellum South, and Jim Crow, the academy explained.
'During the Civil Rights movement in 1966, the Freedom Quilting Bee was established as a way for African-American women from Gee's Bend and nearby Rehoboth to gain economic independence. The Bee cooperative began to sell quilts throughout the U.S., gaining recognition for the free-form, seemingly improvisational designs that had long been the hallmark of local quilt design. As awareness grew, so did acclaim, and the quilts entered the lexicon of homegrown American art.
'Since then, quilts from Gee's Bend have been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and others. In 2006, the U.S. Postal Service even issued ten commemorative stamps featuring images of Gee's Bend quilts,' it concluded.
The Spencertown Academy opened its doors as a teacher training college in 1847, one of the first United States facilities to accept women as well as men. Its founder was Timothy Woodbridge—pastor of St. Peter's Church in Spencertown, champion of universal education and nephew of Aaron Burr. A decade later, the academy became a two-room schoolhouse for Spencertown and Austerlitz area children; in 1970, the school was closed permanently.
In 1972 local residents formed the Spencertown Academy Society to save the academy and recreate it as a community arts center, spearheading a 10-year restoration of the historic Greek Revival building.
Today the academy offers concerts, lectures, classes and gallery shows.
The curator of the exhibit, Lisa Bouchard Hoe, is a local real estate broker and quilt collector; she worked with the Freedom Quilting Bee Legacy to bring the exhibition to Spencertown.