At first glance, this exhibition might seem a bit quaint, its subject — textiles and the Civil War — evoking Americana more than American history. But this show, “Homefront & Battlefield: Quilts and Context in the Civil War,” which opened last month at the New-York Historical Society after originating at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Mass., does much more: It turns Americana back into history.
The show traces its thematic threads through that period’s fabric with such care that, after seeing the patterns, you will not easily look at coarse woven cloth, the American flag, quilts, mourning clothes — or perhaps even the Civil War — in quite the same way again. Textiles, we come to see, did not just reflect the war’s events or were just another element of the conflict; in many ways they were at the war’s heart.
