The blurred line between purity and profit
When the Alabama quilters come to the Museum of Fine Arts for the opening of their show, ''The Quilts of Gee's Bend," Barbara Barran will be there, too. The high-end New York custom rug designer will be having a trunk show at the MFA, peddling her hand-tufted Gee's Bend-inspired rugs for between $3,000 and $6,300.
If you can't afford the price of a real Gee's Bend quilt -- some are expected to fetch as much as $40,000 in a Manhattan gallery that will be exhibiting them -- you can also consider the Kathy Ireland version that are being sold at Filene's, starting at $99. This is not to be confused with the imitation Gee's Bend quilts that had been available in limited editions from the hip retailer Anthropologie.
As the number of visitors to the touring exhibition continues to proliferate, so, too do the Gee's Bend spinoff products. Now you can buy Gee's Bend quilt notepaper and journals, scarves and ties, rugs, books, and CDs.
Perhaps none of this is terribly surprising, given the longtime American propensity to convert meaningful cultural experiences into meaningful retail ones, be they Renoir paperweights or Gauguin magnets. But there is something about the Gee's Bend spinoffs that makes you wonder: Has this gone too far?
Given the history of the quilts -- made by impoverished descendents of slaves -- is there something a bit incongruous about the profitability factor here? When does healthy entrepreneurship become exploitation?
Mack Scogin, an Atlanta architect who teaches at the Harvard Design School, took a group of students to Gee's Bend two years ago ''to try to get them in touch with the source of these amazing works of art, and the students got caught up in this debate," he says. ''I think that in today's world it's so difficult to come across anything that is truly authentic and uncompromised and genuine. They saw such a pure world, and they worried it would be somehow compromised by outside forces. On the other hand, how would you ever deny those people money?"
The issue has not been ignored by the people at the nonprofit Tinwood Alliance, the members of the Arnett family in Atlanta who made the quilts famous. They emphasize that royalties from the licensed products are being directed back to the community and have enabled many of the quiltmakers to improve their standard of living. And they point out that they are limiting the companies licensing the Gee's Bend quilt images to those who respect the community. ''We want to avoid any of those kinds of products that would adversely affect the growing respect for the original," says Paul Arnett.
The quiltmakers' input is ''critical" to her products, says Ireland, the former supermodel. It's got to be special, it's got to make sense, and the [quiltmakers] need to decide what will give it integrity."
Barran, president of Classic Rug Collection, says she, too, is sensitive to these concerns. ''It was extremely important to me that the women be satisfied with the work I did," she said. ''If people like me had not licensed the designs, the people of Gee's Bend would still be living in poverty, the work would be unrecognized, the quilts would have been forgotten.
''It's improved their lives and given them tremendous recognition, and I don't hear cries of artistic purity when museums puts Monet's water lilies on an umbrella."
