International Quilt Museum launches New Deal era exhibit

When Janneken Smucker, professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, was researching quilt making using the Library of Congress’s resources, she came across hoards of quilt-making photos from the early 1930s.

This seemed out of the norm to Smucker, a lifelong quilt maker and researcher.

Upon further digging, Smucker learned quilts were integral to the federal government’s New Deal strategy to mend the country’s economy and morale during the Great Depression.

This discovery started a yearslong research and curatorial process, resulting in the exhibition “A New Deal for Quilts” at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, on view through April 20.

Displaying more than a dozen quilts made during the Great Depression and New Deal eras, including one from Nebraska, the exhibit documents how American women and the federal government turned to quilt making as both a leisure activity and a propaganda campaign.

“I started to ask the question ‘Well, how do quilts fit into a PR campaign?’” Smucker said. “And it started to make sense. Quilts - they’re feel-good objects. We all smile when we see a quilt and they’re comforting reminders of home. They also represent a lot of the values the government was trying to espouse during this era about lifting yourself up out of poverty, making do, piecing things together.”

New Deal programs like the Works Progress Administration and Tennessee Valley Authority set up sewing rooms nationwide to teach women this livelihood. At the same time, the Farm Security Administration funded photographic documentation that often included staged photos to promote the success of the New Deal.

“[The federal government] really took it and ran with it in the Great Depression as an emblem of how to lift one’s family out of poverty,” Smucker said.

More than a dozen quilts tell different stories about life during the Great Depression. Some nod to the Democratic and Republican parties with donkey and elephant figures, while others mend recycled grain bags for more functional quilts.

Sandy Wassenmiller of Lincoln visited the exhibition’s opening because she studied photography in her undergraduate years and remembers prolific period photographers like Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee. Having grown up sewing clothes, Wassenmiller also visited because she’s trying to learn how to quilt and enjoys the detail in each quilt on view.

Wassenmiller said, “It’s beautiful in its own way how people utilized everything back then.”

While this quilt-making phenomenon happened nearly 100 years ago, Marin Hanson, curator of international collections at the museum, said the exhibit is timely and relevant because of the parallels with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“During the Great Depression and the COVID-19 pandemic, people were facing a common crisis and many of them turned to quiltmaking as a way to keep busy, bolster morale, and in some cases, earn extra money,” Hanson said.

Smucker said she hopes visitors learn the impact quilts had on American morale at the time and the lengths the federal government was willing to go to reach its New Deal goals.

“Somehow, the government was really willing to try some bold ideas,” Smucker said. The objects ... in the gallery demonstrate a huge amount of perseverance and great fortitude.”