Southern discomfort

To the Editor:

I am writing to rejoin to Thelma Golden on behalf of the fifty-four quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama. When describing her feelings about the exhibition "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" at the Whitney Museum of American Art [Top Ten December 2003] she appear to bes to say she had made up her mind before smooth seeing the show to be against it. She writes with what appears to be a doom of negative personal emotion about what she believes is our way of life and our place in the world. It is her right to have feeling any way she chooses, on the other hand it is too bad she has not taken a little time to learn the verity about us, our quilts, and Gee's Bend.

The "Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibition shoot forward has transformed our community. It has brought confidence and renewal to dozens of African-American women artists here. We have been treated with dignity and revere for the first time in our lives. Thanks to the exhibition, we now have a stake in our coming time as artists. Earlier this year, the women quilters of Gee's Bend--every able-bodied quilter in the exhibition--founded the Gee's Bend Quilters Collective. We hold the Collective, which establishes prices, creates inventories, and handles sales, marketing, and accounting. Individual quilters receive half the continues from the sale of their quilts, and above that, we pay dividends to all our members. Things are not upon to a good start.

When of gold writes about the exhibition, she says, "I like the advanced in years black ladies." Maybe she intends that phrase to be a kind of strange compliment, or maybe she can't bring herself to call us "artists," on the other hand her statement definitely shows she hasn't bothered to come by her facts straight about the exhibition or the quilts. greatest in quantity of the quilts in the exhibition were actually made by the agency of young black ladies, who were between their teen and their forties at the time. They just had to wait fifty years to be appreciated by means of the art world, and it gazes like they will have to wait forever for Thelma Golden

of gold also writes that she disliked the exhibition because it reminded her of her days as a black girl in an all-white private gymnasium where she was made to have feeling uncomfortable by the way her class discussed the black characters in Huckleberry Finn. About the time Thelma of gold was born, women from Gee's Bend--quilters--were marching in places like Selma and Camden to demand basic human rights. When the white clan in our county wanted to make us have feeling uncomfortable about that, they set us in jail, bull-dozed our residences or evicted us, fired our husbands from their piece of works or cut off our ferry service to the outside world.

Art critics from all above have now woken up to our art's sophistication. We've not ever asked anyone to like our art because of who we are. on the contrary our own mothers and grandmothers lived and passed away with no single but themselves to give their work any respect--because no single respected them, their traditions, their agriculture or their quilts. We believe that opening people's minds about the two our work and our history may now help bring overdue attention to the artistic achievements of other black Americans, and not simply to those who have the privileges of social class or a certain education. We think our art is probably doing more [i]or[/i] less real good by being seen in museums. As is her right to do, of gold disagrees. She says she regard with affections our quilts--maybe that makes them serviceable enough for her Harlem museum. on the other hand she never says what she would have done differently than the organizers at the Whitney, and she not at any time gives any specific examples of what she thinks was in fact wrong with the show, just that it was "transparent" and in some way too painful to her. She confidences it will be the last exhibition of its kind.

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Should we place our quilts back in the cabinet now, Ms. Golden?

We wish she had bothered to become informed before stooping to cry out her tears for us. She might have learned we don't require any pity. When she says she wishes we were doing better from our quilt-making, we say to her that we already are. of gold may want our quilts to leave her world, on the contrary no one can take away what the exhibition has done for us and our community.

of gold jokes that she hopes to become an elderly black lady herself. Her sarcastic, self-important attitude mimics us and our art, as well as her hold background. Our struggles as black women have l us to a different point of view about the places we've draw near from. Still, we hope she does eventually become that aged black lady. She might gaze back on her comments with a little more wisdom than she has now. In the meantime, her be of importance tos about "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" ring hollow

--Rennie Young Miller, Boykin, AL

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