Quilt Index Funded for Major Expansion

October 11, 2008

EAST LANSING, MI and ASHEVILLE, NC, October 11, 2007 - Thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), The Quilt Index will expand to include quilt ephemera records, new tools for educators, and social networking features that will increase its usefulness for quiltmakers, teachers and students. The Quilt Index www.quiltindex.orgis a joint digital collections project of The Alliance for American Quilts and Michigan State University, through MATRIX: Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online and Michigan State University Museum.

This three-year grant totaling $911,809 catapults an already groundbreaking digital collection to a whole new level. The Quilt Index already features thousands of quilts and will soon contain images of 50,000 quilts, along with related historical information. These quilts come from 23 museums, libraries, universities and state documentation projects. The amassing of this unmatched virtual collection is of national importance because most valuable quilts spend most of their time in storage, unseen to both historians and interested citizens.

"The Quilt Index is a model for doing history and public outreach online," says Mark Kornbluh, Chair of History at MSU and Director of MATRIX, a digital library research and education center. "Digital library tools, paired with such a rich and extensive resource, will allow teachers, curators, researchers, and the general public to explore quilts in-depth and across time and geography. It allows us to see new things in the history and ask new questions of this quintessential American art form."

This new IMLS funding will let Michigan State University and The Alliance for American Quilts both broaden this invaluable collection and make it easier to explore in depth. The ephemera to be added will include such items as old diaries, quilt patterns from newspapers, photographs and quilt catalogs. Online access allows these items to be easily studied without harming the often-fragile originals.

"We are very excited that this grant will further our mission at The Alliance by allowing us to expand upon the rich stories of quilts and quiltmakers," said Linda Pumphrey, co-president of the Alliance for American Quilts, a national nonprofit whose website, www.centerforthequilt.org, offers free resources related to quilts and quiltmakers. "Through this funding The Quilt Index will be able to invite individual collectors to contribute their valuable and fascinating quilt finds to this virtual catalog, employing the same high standards of documentation for which this project is known."

The enhanced resources of the Quilt Index will also benefit from another aspect of this new project: the development of new high-tech tools that will allow students, teachers and other visitors to the site to do things like overlay multiple quilt images to compare them. These new funds will help MSU and The Alliance for American Quilts create user guides for the upgraded Quilt Index, help teachers tap into these resources to enrich their curriculum, and allow quiltmakers, scholars and quilt history buffs worldwide to interact in a social network.

"This project has grown from thousands of hours of important work," says Marsha MacDowell, professor of art and art history and curator of folk arts at Michigan State University Museum. "From documentation work on the grassroots level, to collection and organization on the museum level, to inter-disciplinary collaboration with computer scientists, we are developing new ways to present and preserve cultural heritage work in a virtual world."

The lead applicants on the grant are Michigan State University's MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters and Social Sciences Online and the Michigan State University Museum. Formal institutional partners on the project are The Alliance for American Quilts; the University of Texas at Austin, Center for American History, Winedale division; and the American Folk Art Museum. In addition, many scholars, teachers and curators (including individuals from current Quilt Index contributing institutions) will be developing essays, lesson plans, and online galleries which will expand the website. Anne-Imelda M. Radice, PhD, IMLS Director, describes the impact of the Leadership Grant Award Program. "Cultural institutions energize their communities by not just preserving culture, heritage, and knowledge, but by supporting life-long learning and engagement. National Leadership Grants harness the work of the best of these institutions. By promoting innovation and partnerships, they allow these institutions to create national models that address the challenges of the broader library and museum communities, and help strengthen their impact.

National Leadership Grants help libraries and museums collaborate, build digital resources, and conduct research and demonstration projects. The selected projects are national models that will help foster individual achievement, community responsibility, and life-long learning. This year over $78 million in requests were received and $18,661,716 in awards were granted and over $24 million will be provided as matching funds by recipients.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Its mission is to grow and sustain a "Nation of Learners" because life-long learning is essential to a democratic society and individual success. Through its grant making, convenings, research and publications, the Institute empowers museums and libraries nationwide to provide leadership and services to enhance learning in families and communities, sustain cultural heritage, build twenty-first-century skills, and increase civic participation. To learn more about the Institute, please visit: www.imls.gov

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