Webb Deane Stevens Museum awarded CT Humanities grant to explore identity through historic needlework

The Webb Deane Stevens Museum has been awarded a planning grant from Connecticut Humanities to develop a groundbreaking 2026 exhibition exploring American needlework samplers as material expressions of national identity. The project, titled “Needlework Samplers, Identity, and National Memory,” will examine both the diverse women who created these intricate works and the collectors who preserved them.

The exhibition will challenge traditional narratives about early American needlework by highlighting samplers created by African American, Indigenous, and immigrant women alongside those made by their white counterparts. These pieces reveal how young women from all backgrounds used their craft to exercise agency and self-expression during the early Republic.

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“This generous support from Connecticut Humanities allows us to orchestrate a deeper conversation about the threads that bind our national memory,” said Brenton Grom, Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum. “Our project will not only honor the skilled hands of young women who stitched their stories into silk and linen, but will also examine how those stories have been collected, interpreted, and sometimes silenced over the centuries.”

Guest curator Emily Whitted, a textile historian and PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will lead the research collaborating with an advisory committee of leading scholars. The exhibition will feature samplers from the Museum’s permanent collection of needlework alongside loans from private collections and institutions such as Vassar College and UMass Amherst.

The project will also explore the stories of women collectors over the past century, including members of The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in The State of Connecticut, who recognized the importance of preserving these works. Visitors will discover how collecting became an act of national identity-formation during the Colonial Revival movement.

“Through this planning grant, we can weave together scholarship and community voices to create an exhibition that reveals the surprising complexities of American identity-making,” Grom continued. “It will ensure that the full spectrum of women who contributed to our early Republic’s needlework tradition finally receives the recognition it deserves.”

The exhibition, scheduled to open in 2026, coincides with America’s 250th anniversary celebrations and will be accompanied by a scholarly catalog. The project advances the museum’s vision of inspiring communities to examine the layers of local and national memory that have shaped American identity.

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Webb Deane Stevens Museum awarded CT Humanities grant to explore identity through historic needlework