When the Kohler Foundation gave the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson a stack of 131 quilts from the collection of famed Southern photographer Roland L. Freeman, the museum also inherited the oral histories of many of the makers behind the threads. Freeman, who lived in Washington, D.C., and died in 2023, had a very important wish: for the quilts, most of them crafted in Mississippi, to return home. “Museums have the power to do a reparative approach to storytelling,” says Sharbreon S. Plummer, the guest and lead curator for the resulting Of Salt + Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South, which runs until April 13. Plummer interviewed local quilters and combed through Freeman’s meticulous archive of documents to carry forward the photographer’s work and legacy with care. “To be able to have attribution for these quilters and a window into their inner life was not something we were always afforded,” Plummer says, noting that, in many collections countrywide, it is not uncommon to see quilts credited to anonymous makers. “Roland opened the pathway for me to dig.” Of Salt + Spirit, which showcases more than fifty quilts, includes Freeman’s transcripts, negative sheets, and proud portraits of the artists before their kaleidoscopic masterworks.
Southern Agenda
Threading Through Time

Illustration: Tim Bower