Infinite Variety was a spectacular exhibition of a private collection of 651 red-and-white quilts, arrayed to enable the public to fully experience the vibrancy, creativity, and productive exuberance of the quilts and the communities that make them. Held over six days in March 2011, the installation resided within the 55,000-square-foot Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall, an 85-foot high vaulted environment. The exhibition included a café, gift shop, and seating with breathtaking views; exhibit structures raised the quilts as high as 45 feet off the floor. As a “gift to New York City,” the collector ensured that audience admission was free.

In March 2010, The American Folk Art Museum invited us to participate in a design competition amongst a small number of firms. The Museum wanted an installation design for 800 red-and-white quilts from a private collection. The exhibition would occur over the course of five days in March 2011, and it would be the largest quilt display devoted to a single color scheme ever presented. The location would be the 55,000-square-foot Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. The brief included an integrated Museum shop and café area, and the entire exhibition installation would occur in less than three days. Over the course of the project, the quilt count reduced to 651, and the installation time became 72 hours – so that the exhibit could stay open to the public for an additional day. We were responsible for all aspects of the design, fabrication, and installation of the exhibition, and the approach needed to be “efficient and cost-effective.” We also executed the graphic design and production scope, including the project identity, marketing materials, and maps for the mobile app.
Through conversations with the curator, we learned that this was the first large quilt event in New York City in nearly a decade, and – unlike previous events – would be free to the public. The installation would have minimal amounts of didactic information, and the collector wanted the quilts to appear as a united vision – an overall, spectacular view that included nearly-endless, explorable variation.

Inspired by logistical elements within the brief, we were also mindful to visitors’ perspectives, respectful to the quilts’ makers, and felt it important to create a sustainable fabrication solution. Additionally, we envisioned a wider view of the target audience. The Museum considered the primary audience to be quilters; the collector – Joanna S. Rose – considered this a “gift to New York City.” With free admission, the exhibit could include a more general public who might not have otherwise paid to enter.

We concentrated on four design challenges. The first challenge was to show the entire collection as a whole without overwhelming the public. The second challenge was to experience the quilts without a feeling of relentless repetition—particularly for those not already passionate about quilts. The third challenge was to use the quilts themselves to convey a felt sense of the often-anonymous makers and communities of makers whose creativity, skill, and cooperation are literally stitched into the quilts. The fourth challenge was to develop a sustainable, inexpensive system of display that would utilize the vaulted ceiling of the Armory, retain the quilts securely and safely, configure in a variety of ways, not call attention to itself, and be fully installed in a very short time. Our design experiments also addressed the enormous number of quilts as an asset rather than a challenge; we explored ways to leverage the quantity to create the exhibit rather than simply find a way to fit them all as objects within an architectonic structure.

Our concept design research included investigation of typical quilt hanging mechanisms, typical quilt exhibit methodologies, quilting communities, and necessary concerns about the presentation of historic textiles – for even limited amounts of time. We created extensive printouts of red-and-white quilts to brainstorm potential designs, and we experimented with form structures by using red-and-white playing cards. We researched sustainable materials and quick-set-up methodologies, and aimed for a combination of simplicity and reverence—a conceptually strong approach that also exhibited beautiful elegance.

We responded to the massive size of the exhibit by choosing common elements that could both scale well (in terms of the number necessary for use) and support the creation of dramatic forms. The exhibit spanned the entire floor of the 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall. Of the 651 quilts (more than 23,000 square feet of fabric), 160 (chosen by the curators) were exhibited at eye level. The hanging structures included more than 338 cardboard tubes and more than 2500 binder clips. The six cylinders each rose 30 feet high, and the central spiral reached a pinnacle of 45 feet off of the ground.

We developed a sustainable, inexpensive system of display that utilized the vaulted ceiling of the Armory, retained the quilts securely and safely, configured in a variety of ways, did not call attention to itself, and was fully installed in a very short time. To envision the hanging structure details, we created prototypes within our studio. When – in collaboration with our fabricator – we devised a quilt hanging mechanism out of binder clips and felt, we reviewed the approach with the Museum’s Chief Registrar to make sure that it both evenly distributed the quilts’ weight and performed no harm to the textiles. We tested the process for hanging quilts, to make sure that our preferred hanging methodology could be accomplished in the limited amount of installation time.

Preparation for installation was extensive – structure sizes and locations were studied in both architectural drawings and digital models; elevations detailed the placement of each quilt, we created a location-related coding system to catalog the quilts, and individual quilts were labeled and boxed based on location; lighting plots determined the locations of over 350 light fixtures, all of which were focused individually during installation. The hanging system was designed as a straightforward sequence of installation steps that could be reliably repeated by several crews working simultaneously in the hall. A simple system of suspension cables threaded through cardboard tubes mounted with binder clips held the quilts. These were suspended from rented theatrical truss and enabled the entire assembly to be done from the floor in a series of stages. Each pavilion was raised independently; several crews worked simultaneously from the top rows downward as the trusses were gradually lifted toward the ceiling. These minimal materials, along with simple MDF platforms (which included both display areas and benches), are fully re-usable, and the cardboard tubes were sourced locally. Once a projected tour is complete, the materials will be recycled.

Martha Stewart called Infinite Variety “…the most incredible display of quilts that I have ever seen.” Visitors wept at the entrance. Quilters traveled from around the world, describing the experience as once-in-a-lifetime and reporting that quilting was acknowledged and revealed as never before. Many non-quilters returned daily. The event broke Park Avenue Armory attendance records.

Acknowledging the innovation, Tom Fruedenheim, for Curator: The Museum Journal, wrote, “[O]ne was immediately struck by the notion that there was no other way this could have been done… that sense of the perfect solution to an impossible problem was surely what helped generate ongoing astonishment as [visitors] strolled in and out and under the works of display.” Angela Reichers, for Metropolis, added, “On all scales, from architectural to intimate, [this] is a 360-degree immersive experience that fuses both the whole and the parts into a transcendent example of the art of exhibition design.”

Infinite Variety both activated present relationships and represented absent makers. Fruedenheim wrote, “[T]here was a palpable feeling of joy in the air. And a constant feeling of wonder – at the endless juxtaposed patterns and shapes, and at the way one kept newly seeing what one thought one had already seen.” Simon Schama, for the Financial Times, noted, “[I]n an age when all our fingers seem to do is race across a keyboard, a different kind of digital handiwork done with steadfast grace and exquisite vision can afford us a glimpse of heaven on earth.”