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The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles

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The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles

1996
20th century
22 in. x 29 1/4 in. (55.88 cm x 74.3 cm)

Faith Ringgold, American, b. 1930

Object Type: Prints
Creation Place: North America, United States
Medium and Support: 6-color lithograph on paper
Credit Line: Carleton College Art Collection
Accession Number: 1998.151
Faith Ringgold is a prominent African-American woman artist, who like Schapiro, often takes the traditionally "feminine" quilt as format for art-making. This print refers to quilt-making and female community. The Sunflower Quilting Bee presents a fabled moment in art history, revised to include not only women but African-American women. In Ringgold’s artistic universe, the archetypal "great artist" Vincent Van Gogh was inspired to his greatest works, the Sunflower paintings, by members of the "Sunflower Quilters Society of America." Their radiant sunflower quilt, stitched in honor of such African-American women leaders as Sojourner Truth, Mary McLeod Bethune, Ida B. Wells and Rosa Parks, could serve as a banner in their campaign for positive social change.

What do van Gogh and a group of female African-American quilters have in common? In depicting them together, Faith Ringgold suggests that both the quilters, who are prominent African American historical figures, and the white male “genius” should be included in the story of art history.

Ringgold created Sunflower Quilters’ Society of America for the College Art Association, This print is one of several donated by Marilyn Stokstad ’55, a Professor of Art History at Kansas State University and author of a popular introductory art history text.

Text written for New Art, New Ideas: Students Curate the Collection, March 10, 2006

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