The Robert Cargo Gallery Quilt Collection
The gallery currently offers primarily contemporary African-American quilts by some of the best-known Alabama quiltmakers as well as a few museum quality antique pieces made by Anglo quiltmakers in the last quarter of the l9th century.  No antique African-American quilts are available.  Photographs and prices are available on request.

Our collection includes examples by many notable African American quilters including Nora Ezell, recipient of the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts; Mary Lucas, mother of acclaimed Southern outsider artist Charlie Lucas;  Jeff Martin and Dennis Jones, unusual examples of African-American men who ventured into territory typically dominated by women; Lureca Outland, Mary Maxtion, and many others. We also have a selection of quilts by African-American, self-taught quilt artist Yvonne Wells. 

• Photos of the opening event for "Thirty-Seven by Fifteen," an show of 37 selected African-American quilts from our gallery collection exhibited at the Goggleworks Arts Center in Reading, PA, in 2006.   Excerpt from the exhibition essay.

A brief history of the Robert and Helen Cargo quilt collection

The privately held Robert and Helen Cargo Quilt Collection contains over 1500 quilts and 400 tops.  This collection concentrates primarily on the quilts of Alabama but also includes a strong representation of African-American works and other pieces made in the Southern United States. Three quilts were made prior to 1820; 150 fall between 1821 and 1900; 600 were made between 1901-1940; and 750 are contemporary. A range of techniques are represented in the collection: appliqué, pieced, album, yo-yo, crazy, and Broderie Perse. A large number of crazy quilts are represented, in addition to a group of wool quilts made from men's suiting (c. 1910), and several pieces reflecting salvage and recycling efforts. The collection also contains many quilt-related items such as quilt blocks and vintage photographs in which quilts appear.

The Robert and Helen Cargo Quilt Collection is widely recognized as one of the most significant quilt collections in the United States.  See Shelley Zegart's American Quilt Collection:  Antique Quilt Masterpieces, 1996,  which describes 74 of America's most important public and private collections.

The collection began in the mid-1950s when Robert Cargo inherited a small group of quilts from his great-grandmother, Mary Ann Rouse Thomas. According to the Cargos, as native Alabamians, the collection's focus on quilts of their state was a natural choice from the beginning. The importance of this collection is in both its number and its depth. It contains groups of as many as 10 to 12 quilts from a single quilt maker; quilts made by men, including a group of 12 to 14 made by Dennis Jones; and quilts made by the collectors themselves and their ancestors. According to the Cargos, it is the most extensive collection of Alabama quilts in the country. Within Alabama, examples have been exhibited at the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art. In addition, individual pieces have been exhibited in major museums across the country. Since 1980, quilts from the collection have been published in over 30 major quilt books and periodicals including Quilt Digest and Quilters' Journal.

After 1980, the collection focused more on African-American pieces. "As a group, these quilts have the qualities that excite me as I grow older-bold, eccentric, idiosyncratic, improvisational, brightly-colored. I find myself less and less drawn to the finely stitched, traditionally organized quilt types that I collected with enthusiasm at an earlier time, " says Robert Cargo.

In 2001, the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, acquired 156 African-American quilts from the Cargo collection, thereby ensuring that this important group will remain intact,  receive quality care,  and be accessible to a wide audience.