Bruce Museum Offers Lecture Series on Craft and Social Change in America

“Craft and Social Change in America” is the theme of a four-part Monday morning lecture series at the Bruce Museum that will begin Feb. 29.

Textile artist, cultural arts ambassador and teacher Ed Johnetta Miller of Hartford will kick off the series with a brief history of African-American quilt makers in her presentation on “History, Community, Life and Art.” As a woman of color, Miller said that she always cognizant of her responsibility to her cultural inheritance and community. She will talk about herself as a weaver, quilt maker, master teaching artist, and community activist.

“My approach is one of improvisation, much like the idiosyncratic rifts played in the jazz to which I constantly listen to while working. I often begin my work with a concept inspired by a cultural or spiritual experience,” she explains. “I plan to share my improvisational approach to life and art.”

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Addtional speakers in the series include Dr. Myrah Brown Green, art historian and quilt artist discussing “The Quilter, The Theme, Their Research and the Process” on March 7; Artistic Director at the Rubin Foundation Sara Reisman talking about “Art as a Human Right” on March 14; and on March 21, Yale PhD student Ruthie Dibble discussing how the production of textiles during the Civil War allowed African-American and white women to renegotiate their place in the social fabric of the United States.

Supported in part by a grant from Connecticut Humanities, the lectures are held to complement And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations, the museum’s current exhibition of quilts by artists of the Women of Color Quilters Network.

Admission to the programs is free for Bruce Museum members, $7 non-members. No advance registration required. All programs begin at 10 a.m. For more information, call 203-869-0376 or email info@brucemuseum.org.

Contributed photo: Textile artist Ed Johnetta Miller.