Cuesta Benberry

CUESTA BENBERRY1983 Inductee

By Mary Sue Hannan, 1983

CUESTA RAY BENBERRY’S DILIGENT SEARCH for accuracy and truth,coupled with her generous support of other researchers, hasendeared her to quilt enthusiasts for decades. Describedby Who’s Who in America as “a quilt historian, achivist andconsultant,” she is known to the quilt world for her expertiseon quiltmakers, quilt pattern history, and African Americanquilts. Her exhaustive research and her enormous collectionof patterns and quilt ephemera are legendary.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cuesta was raised in St. Louis,Missouri, by her father, Walter Rand and grandmother followingthe death of her mother, Marie. She was educated in the St.Louis public schools before attending Stowe College (nowHarris-Stowe State College), where she received a B.A. ineducation in 1945. After graduation, she embarked on a careeras a teacher, reading specialist, and school librarian thatlasted forty years. Cuesta also earned an M.A. in libraryscience from the University of Missouri at St. Louis, enablingher to broaden the scope of her quilt research with ahistorical perspective.

She first took an interest in quilts not because she was borninto a quiltmaking family but because she married into one. George Benberry’s family made quilts; the young couplereceived one from his mother as their wedding present in1951. When they visited George’s relatives in WesternKentucky, Cuesta was immediately captivated by their quilts-the colors, patterns, and quilting stitches. Cuesta, the

researcher, began asking questions. “Who made them, when,how, where?” and, most important, “May I photograph them?” Her curiosity about those Kentucky quilts launched a lifelongquest to fully understand quilt pattern history.

Cuesta arrived on the national stage by a circuitous route. Despite her busy life as a mother, wife and school librarian,she always maintained a side network of quilt correspondents. Starting in the 1950’s she actively participated in severalround robins-a popular means of pattern exchange in the daysbefore the photocopying machine. Patterns were carefully handcopied onto tissue paper and circulated to each participant tocopy in turn.

One round robin friend, Dolores Hinson, was writing for thehighly regarded publication Nimble Needle Treasures, edited byPat Almy. After receiving Cuesta’s long letters filled withfascinating pattern information, Dolores suggested that Cuestawrite for the magazine on a regular basis. As its researcheditor for five years, Cuesta had a vehicle to share herfindings with a wide audience.

Soon after Nimble Needle Treasures ceased publication in 1975,honoree Bonnie Leman invited Cuesta to write for Quilter’sNewsletter Magazine. For nearly twenty years, Questacontributed countless book reviews and articles on quilthistory, pattern history, and little-known quiltmakers anddesigners. She was also a regular contributor to Quilters’Journal, a magazine concentrating on quilt history, publishedand edited by honoree Joyce Gross from 1977 to 1987.

Cuesta announced her interest in African American quilthistory with a query published in Quilter’s NewsletterMagazine in the mid-1970s, asking readers to send herinformation about quilts made by African Americans. She begana new file that filled rapidly with the missing information,and she became a voice for the overlooked African Americanquilters. Her studies became a passion; she decided to make

a quilt from patterns significant to the story of AfricanAmerican women and their quilts. The center block, in theEvening Star pattern, included an inked poem referring to theplight of the black mother whose child was sold into slavery.

Cuesta’s findings clearly proved that quilts made by AfricanAmerican quilters were as varied as those made by otherAmerican quilters. She discovered that the quilts wereproducts of talented, creative needlewomen and artists and didnot necessarily reflect a cultural memory of African designs,a theory fostered by some researchers.

In 1980. Cuesta traveled to California to attend the firstmeeting of the American Quilt Study Group, where she made aspecial presentation entitled “Afro-American Women and Quilts”which was published in the first volume of Uncoverings, Cuestalater served on the group’s board of directors and presentedtwo other papers at the annual seminars.

In 1985, Cuesta retired from her full-time position with theSt. Louis Public Schools to devote more time to her ownresearch and writing. She often contributed articles to TheWomen of Color Quilters’ Network Newsletter and otherpublications.

Cuesta served as a consultant for several state quilt projectsoften writing the forewords for the catalogs. Requests forher slide lectures increased, and she found herself in demandas a speaker throughout the United States and Europe.

The Kentucky Quilt Project asked Cuesta to curate anexhibition of African American quilts and write a book toaccompany it. The exhibit and book, entitled Always There:The African American Presence in American Quilts, gave Cuestaan opportunity to present her findings regarding thediversity, originality and importance of African Americanquilts and quiltmakers. The exhibit was shown in Louisville,Kentucky, in 1992, and also at the Anacostia Museum of the

Smithsonian Institution.

In November 1983, Cuesta Benberry was inducted into TheQuilters Hall of Fame. In her acceptance speech, shedeclared, “What I see as the quilt investigator’s obligationsis the explanation and enrichment of quilt informationundergirded by accuracy and truth in a form of seriousscholarship.” She also called for “the documentation of allquilts in retrievable form for future scholars and forposterity”.

Cuesta later served on the board of directors and as advisorto the selection committee for The Quilters Hall of Fame, andin 1995, she lectured at the organization’s annual celebrationon “America’s Cherished Quilts: The Harriet Powers BibleQuilts.” In 1999, she gave the Hall of Fame her extensivecollection of some 800 quilt blocks, 200 of which werefeatured in the exhibit Evidences of Friendship: The QuiltBlock Collection of Cuesta Benberry. Cuesta’s love of childrenalso led her to establish an African-American quilt archive atthe Vaughn Cultural Center in St. Louis, where groups ofschoolchildren come on field trips to learn about quiltingtraditions.

In 1997, Cuesta joined honoree Joyce Gross in curating alandmark exhibit, the meticulously researched 20th CenturyQuilts 1900-1970: Women Make Their Mark, at the Museum of theAmerican Quilter’s Society in Paducah, Kentucky. The exhibitrepresented the combination of nearly eighty years of quiltscholarship on the part of the two quilt historians. In 2000,Cuesta curated A piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans for the Old State House Museum in Little Rock and wrote theaccompanying volume.

Cuesta’s work on pattern history, quilt documentation, andAfrican American quiltmakers has greatly enriched theunderstanding of the American quilt experience. To paraphraseher own 1983 Quilters Hall of Fame acceptance speech, Cuesta

has “given her best shot” by “minding her P’s and Q’s”- herpatterns and her quilts-for nearly fifty years. Quilters andhistorians everywhere are the beneficiaries.

The results of Cuesta’s research fill 150 scrapbooks ofnewspaper and magazine clippings, pattern booklets, paperpatterns, tracings, and related materials that form thenucleus of a much larger quilt archive. In the middle of the2000 decade, the American Folk Art Museum became the custodianof Cuesta’s large quilt archive until 2009 when, with Cuesta’sson’s permission, the property was transferred to the MichiganState University Museum in East Lansing. Prior to thistransfer and following Cuesta’s death, the remainder of thequilt collection and her black history archive were donated tothe Michigan State University Museum. “We were…honored thatCuesta Benberry’s collections have come to the museum” saidMarsha MacDowell, MSU Museum curator and professor of art andart history. “research-based collections like hers arecritical to still under-studied but important aspects of quilthistory and of African American art and cultural history. Weknow this collection of primary materials will enable scholarson campus and around the world to benefit from Cuesta’s trail-blazing work and to carry it forward.”

Update: Cuesta passed away on August 23, 2007.

“It seems I may be standing alone, like St. John in thewilderness, exhorting the cause of the individual African-American quilter’s creativity, a recognition of the diversityof African-American quilting, and most of all, an abandonmentof the en-masse ‘cookie cutter approach’ to the investigationsand research of African-American quilt history.”

Cuesta Benberry

Piecework, January/February 1995

“The Always There Cuesta Benberry Presence in Quilt HistoryResearch” made by Honoree Xenia Cord, replicates the onlyquilt attributed to Cuesta. The center star includes a quotefrom Cuesta’s induction speech, “We, the quilt community,

charge you (quilt researchers with the task of building a bodyof quilt information whose veracity and scholarship will berespected by all.”

Cuesta Benberry and Hazel Carter at Cuesta’s induction in 1983in Arlington, Virginia.

Meander over to these links:

About Cuesta Benberry Quilt Research Collections at theGreat Lakes Quilt CenterThe Cuesta Benberry Quilt and Ephemera Collection at theGreat Lakes Quilt CenterUnpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry, anAfrican American Quilt Scholar at the DuSable Museum ofAfrican American HistoryCuesta Benberry, 83; Scholar of Quilts and Author at theWashington Post

Selected Reading

Benberry, Cuesta. “The 20th Century’s First Quilt Revival.”Parts 1, 2, 3. Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine, no.114 (July1979), no. 115 (September 1979); no. 116 (October 1979)

——. “Afro-American Women and Quilts: An Introductory Essay.”Uncoverings 1980.” Mill Valley, CA: American Quilt StudyGroup, 1981.

—–. A Piece of My Soul: Quilts by Black Arkansans. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2000.

—–“White Perspectives of Blacks in Quilts and Related Media.” Uncoverings 1983. Mill Valley, CA: American Quilt Study Group,1984.

“Quilt Treasures Presents: Cuesta Benberry.” www.allianceforamericanquilts.org/treasures/main.php?id=5-16-3. Accessed December 6, 2010.

For a more information see: The Quilters Hall of Fame: 42Masters Who Have Shaped Our Art Click here