• See All Events
• Arts & Crafts
• Music & Theater
• Sports
• Culinary
• Exhibitions
• Family
• Fairs & Festivals
• Nature & Wildlife
• Heritage & Cultural
• Native Cultures

Sign up for Travel News

Hopi Quilts: Unique Yet Universal

January 21 through August 20, 2012
Arizona State Museum
Tucson

Hopi Quilts: Unique Yet Universal

Arizona State Museum’s newest exhibit is a cozy one, featuring 20 Hopi quilts from the 1970s to the present.

While quilts and quilting are almost universally known in general American society, likely less familiar is the quilt-making tradition among the Hopi of northern Arizona. This small exhibit offers the opportunity to experience a familiar art form through a culturally unique lens.

American quilting goes back to colonial times. As settlers and soldiers moved west, they brought quilts and quilting skills with them, introducing some Native American communities to the craft. Christian missionaries, particularly Mormons, introduced quilting along with other European homemaking skills to the Native people they were hoping to convert. 

The best known quilters in the southwestern United States are the Hopi, who have a long history of producing beautiful cotton and wool blankets, robes, belts, and ceremonial sashes.  Traditionally, men were the weavers among the Hopi, their looms set up in kivas, or ceremonial chambers.

From the 1880s on, quilting was embraced by both Hopi women and some men, and over the past century it has become a fixture in Hopi society. Hopi women quilt for many of the same reasons as other women – for wedding and baby gifts, for family use, for personal satisfaction, and in some cases, to sell. While many typical American quilt patterns are evident – “crazy quilt,” “log cabin,” “nine-patch” – a uniquely Hopi aesthetic is expressed through the use of katsina or butterfly imagery, for example, and pottery and basketry motifs.

http://www.statemuseum.arizona.edu

For More Information

Get Directions