Artwork Details
- Title
- Miss Ruby’s Crown
- Artist
- Date
- 2009
- Location
- Dimensions
- 40 3⁄4 × 40 1⁄8 × 2 1⁄2 in. (103.5 × 101.9 × 6.4 cm) irregular
- Copyright
- © 2023, Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks
- Credit Line
- Gift of Fleur S. Bresler
- Mediums Description
- hand dyed cotton, silk, netting, metallic fabric, lame, beads, buttons shells, found objects, cotton batt, sequins, and cording
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Figure — fragment — hand
- Dress — accessory — handbag
- Object Number
- 2023.40.11
Artwork Description
Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks
born 1947, Washington, DC
resides Wesley Chapel, FL
Miss Ruby’s Crown
2009
hand dyed cotton, silk, netting, metallic fabric, lamé, beads, buttons, shells, found objects, cotton batting, sequins, and cording
Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks remembers the services she attended with her parents at Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, as times of worship, pride, and beauty. This quilt’s subject, Miss Ruby, modeled after Brooks’s mother, Hazel Dobbins Carter, represents the sophisticated and thoughtfully styled church woman. She wears a showstopper hat, white gloves, and purse, embodying the observation by anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston that “the will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro expression. Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator.”
Handmade, abstract, and inclusive of found objects, the quilt embodies Brooks’s signature style. It also has painterly qualities, a callback to her training in painting at Howard University’s College of Fine Arts.
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2023.40.11, © 2023, Gwendolyn Aqui-Brooks
We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts of Black Women Artists, 2025