Georgia’s Girlhood Embroidery: “Crowned with Glory and Immortality”
October 31, 2015 – February 28, 2016
Homemade narratives
Georgia’s girlhood work has yet to be illuminated: this exhibition featured antebellum ornamental needlework and investigated both feminine skills and girlhood education in Georgia. The embroideries are samplers in search of their stories; they give voice and presence to those who made them. When studied in conjunction with other documents that survive, the samplers enrich our understanding of Georgia’s in-migration, settlement and out-migration; the influence of religion on female education; economic growth and personal disaster. Georgia’s embroideries are visual narratives of kinship ties, business interests and the flow of people, goods and ideas across regional boundaries. This exhibition coincided with the eighth Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts in February 2016.
The museum published a fully illustrated catalogue to accompany the exhibition.
Curators
Kathleen Staples, independent scholar, and Dale Couch, curator of decorative arts
Sponsors
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art.