These fragile quilts by Black craftspeople need to be preserved — but the federal government has pulled the funds

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) is home to one of the world's largest collections of African-American quilts — some 3,000 of them.

Bequeathed to the museum in 2019 by the estate of the late private collector Eli Leon, the collection is important because of its vast size and because of the detailed records Leon kept about each quilt he acquired.

"These are beautiful artworks that can be enjoyed from an aesthetic point of view," said BAMPFA's  associate curator and academic liaison Elaine Yau, who curated the museum's upcoming exhibition, Routed West: Twentieth Century African American Quilts in California. "But how they're really significant is thinking about how we regard the history of everyday Americans."

Quilts in jeopardy

The urgent conservation needs of roughly half of these artworks, some of which date back to the 1860s, is now in jeopardy, owing to the sudden termination of a $460,000 federal grant earmarked for their conservation just a few weeks shy of the exhibition's opening.

Daria Lugina, Courtesy of BAMPFA /

BAMPFA received a termination letter in April from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency which administers the grant.

"IMLS has determined that your grant is unfortunately no longer consistent with the agency's priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States and the IMLS Program," said the letter, signed by IMLS acting director Keith Sonderling.

The museum was among the hundreds of cultural institutions that received similar grant termination letters from IMLS. BAMPFA also received an email from the National Endowment for the Arts terminating a $40,000 grant that was intended to help cover other costs associated with mounting the quilt exhibition.

An IMLS statement said the agency is redirecting funding toward programs that "serve as a symbol to their communities of American greatness, ones that spark the imagination of children and provide an outlet for younger generations to immerse themselves in the inspirational story of our founding, ones that impart a renewed sense of pride and inspire the virtues of patriotic citizenship — these are the initiatives the IMLS will be championing under this new Administration as we help President Trump usher in the Golden Age of America."

Conservation: A race against the clock

Because quilts are for everyday use and stored in peoples' homes, they're easily exposed to mold, insects and other destructive elements that cause the fabric to degrade over time.

That's why, BAMPFA's Yau said, all 3,000 quilts in the museum's collection are undergoing a rigorous conservation process to make them safe for the public to view.

It involves putting batches of quilts into an enclosed chamber and treating them with carbon dioxide gas for about a five to seven week period.  "That's a way of starving anything that's alive in there," said Yau. Then the quilts are individually vacuumed  to remove dust particles, spritzed with an antiseptic surface cleaner, and finally folded and placed in acid-free tissue and boxes. 

Daria Lugina, Courtesy of BAMPFA /

BAMPFA estimates the cost of this process to be more than $1.6 million —and that's just for the initial conservation. Their longer-term care is an additional expense.

Julie Rodrigues Widholm, the executive director of BAMPFA, said the museum had put roughly half of the quilts through the conservation process at the time the IMLS grant was terminated. She said around $220,000 of the IMLS grant remains, although those funds are no longer available to the museum. The museum, however, is committed to finding a way to continue conserving the quilts. She is hoping foundations, corporations and other entities will step in to make up for the loss.

But it's a race against the clock.

With the funds that have already been disbursed, Widholm said, "We can basically continue conservation work through December. After that, we do not have funding to continue. And there is urgency to doing this work. Textiles are very fragile materials."

The importance of conservation

Conservation is a crucial, often hidden aspect of museums' work.

"What happens when the funding for conservation at the federal level runs out? Cultural objects begin to deteriorate – often silently, invisibly," said Lissa Rosenthal-Yoffe, executive director of the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation and the American Institute for Conservation. "So communities lose the ability to preserve their histories." 

Daria Lugina, Courtesy of BAMPFA /

Rosenthal-Yoffe  said some corporations and foundations provide significant funding for art conservation, such as Bank Of America and the Mellon Foundation. But government agencies like IMLS, the National Parks Service, and the National Endowment for the Humanities have long been the primary funders.

"We can't lean into the private sector for this support in an ongoing way," Rosenthal-Yoffe said.

One of the foundations funding BAMPFA's quilt conservation is the Henry Luce Foundation, which gave BAMPFA roughly $150,000. "When you look at the resources that even IMLS – which is not a huge agency – puts into the arts, that is not something that we can compensate for," said Sean Buffington, the foundation's interim president.

Twenty-one states file a lawsuit in April against Trump's executive order calling for the dismantling of the IMLS and other agencies. A judge has since issued a preliminary injunction that put grant terminations on momentary hold, although this doesn't mean that more funds will be released.

"So at this time, we have no choice but to turn elsewhere for funding support," Widholm said.

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story for air and web. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.

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