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NEWS RELEASE
DAWSON COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY & MUSEUM
JULY 22, 2005
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is organizing Going West! Quilts and Community Along the Great Platte River Road. This
exhibition of remarkable quilts will represent the experience of the pioneers who traveled to the Nebraska Territory. The quilts will appear at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum
from October 5, 2007 through January 13, 2008. The show will then travel to three other venues, concluding its tour in December of 2008.
The Great Platte River Road was a principal route for
America's western expansion. As early as 1830, wagons loaded with the necessities for a new life had traveled the entire Great Platte River Road. In almost every "traveler's guide," bedding and quilts
were listed among those pieces essential to the voyage. The exhibition and publication will consider how women prepared for their move westward and the part quilts played in their journey and in their
lives on the frontier. The project's guest curator and author of the companion catalogue, Sandi Fox, has worked on number of successful and popular shows and publications.
There will be
approximately fifty-five objects in the exhibition, including quilts, bedcovers, costumes, dolls and doll beads, approximately eighty-five objects represented in the catalogue. Selected from the
collection of the Dawson County Historical Society and Museum is "Wagon Wheels".
"The first process in preparing for this exhibit is the quilts from across Nebraska will arrive in
Washington, D.C. to be photographed. Then the pieces will be prepared for the upcoming exhibit," stated Barb Vondras, Museum Director. "This is quilt is a wonderfully intricate example of embroidered
variations. Each pieced circle connects with the other by embroidered motifs and each then connects to the border. It was quilted by Mrs. Louis G. Knapple."
Museums were contacted in 2004 in
regards to the exhibit planning. The wheels for this project had begun in 1994. The museum, with the members of the Plum Creek Quilt Guild hosted curator, Fox as the museum's collection was
reviewed and catalogued. Then archival boxes, tissue, and other items were implemented to house the collection. "I want to thank the members of the local guild and the Nebraska State Quilt Guild whose
dedication to the preservation of this segment of our cultural heritage now will be known across the nation."
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