Comments (0) BEST ACCIDENTAL MODERN ART SHOW - 2006

Amish Quilts Denver Art Museum

Amish women from the turn of the last century didn't intend for their quilts to be works of modern art, but that's exactly what happened, as evidenced by last year's Amish Quilts exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. The quilts look much like the minimalist paintings done much later, but the Amish were guided not by aesthetics -- as the minimalists were -- but by a religious philosophy that called for plainness. They preferred solid colors in dark shades and fine dressmaking wool and fancy polished cotton, which turned the quilts into bold geometric compositions. DAM textile curator Alice Zrebiec put the show together using quilts loaned by Faith and Stephen Brown. Zrebiec's best decision was displaying the quilts as paintings.