2018 Mary Lee Bendolph and the Quilts of Gee's Bend

List Gallery Director Andrea Packard ’85 adapted this exhibition for two venues on campus. The List Gallery featured a selection of quilts made between the late 1970s and 2010 and several prints made in 2005. McCabe Library's upper atrium featured several quilts by Mary Lee Bendolph alongside works by her mother and daughter—three generations of women who responded to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow with remarkable faith, resilience, and creativity.

With Susan Dreher, visual initiatives and exhibitions librarian, and Alicia Ruley-Nock, a Swarthmore quilter, Packard curated a companion exhibition, Responses to Gee’s Bend, to hang alongside the Gee’s Bend quilts in McCabe Library. It featured quilts by 17 artists from around the country and two quilts made by students who took Black Art: Quilting as Culture, a course taught by Ms. Ruley-Nock and Professor of History Allison Dorsey.