Harriet's Quilt

Harriet Tubman and Other Truths, Scott’s largest exhibition to date, opened in October 2017 at Grounds for Sculpture, a sculpture park and museum in Hamilton, New Jersey. This homage to Tubman (ca. 1820–1913), the formerly enslaved abolitionist who, at great risk, led dozens of people to freedom, was curated by Patterson Sims, former director of New Jersey’s Montclair Art Museum, with a separate installation, titled Harriet’s Closet, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, former director of the Studio Museum in Harlem and curator emerita at New York’s Museum of Art and Design. The installation was intended as a “dream boudoir” for Tubman: the “inner sanctum of a great lady,” complete with a glass rifle.2 A standout work there, spilling out of a found wooden trunk, was Harriet’s Quilt, an organically shaped assemblage of glass beads, found plastic beads, and yarn incorporating fabric knotted by Elizabeth Talford Scott (see pl. 4), the artist’s late mother, and left unused at the time of her death.

Harriet Tubman and Other Truths, Scott’s largest exhibition to date, was an homage to Tubman (ca. 1820–1913), the formerly enslaved abolitionist who, at great risk, led dozens of people to freedom. The exhibit featured an installation titled Harriet's Closet, a "dream boudoir" for Tubman, where Harriet's Quilt was a standout work. Spilling out of a found wooden trunk, in an organically shaped assemblage the piece features glass beads, found plastic beads, and yarn knotted by Elizabeth Talford Scott, the artist’s late mother, and left unused at the time of her death.