PAINTED WITH SILK
The Art of Early American Embroidery Exhibition Booklet
Painted with Silk featured unusually beautiful and well-preserved examples of inherently fragile embroideries in order to explore the cultural values and norms that schoolgirl embroidery was used to teach. Contemporary embroideries by the artist Elaine Reichek were included to expose and criticize the assumptions about gender, class and race that they expressed and reinforced.
This booklet accompanies the exhibition and tells much of the compelling backstories for the works when there was not room in the gallery.
