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Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
MICHAEL CUMMINGS (1945 - ) Freedom.
Quilt with appliqué including machine sewn cotton fabrics, ceramic beads and textile markers, 2013. 1701x1397 mm; 67x55 inches. Signed and dated in ink, lower right recto. Signed, titled, dated and inscribed "67x55" in ink on a fabric label, verso.
Provenance: collection of the artist, New York.
Freedom depicts a civil rights worker signing for freedom, surrounded by quotations and lyrics from Bob Dylan, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Mavis Staples. Along the quilt's edges, Michael Cummings has placed additional text related to events during the civil rights movement.
Cummings is widely regarded as one of the nation's leading African American quilters. A Los Angeles native, he moved to New York City in 1970 and became friends with Romare Bearden. He experimented with collage in various media, and by 1975, moved to strictly fabric. Today, he lives and works in Harlem. Other quilts by Cummings are in the permanent collections of the American Craft Museum, New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the California African American Museum, Atlanta Life Insurance, Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Cummings was previously commissioned by the Art in Embassies, Absolut Vodka, the City of Knoxville, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Percent for Art, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and HBO.
