"Wild by Design: 200 Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts," an exhibition of 25 new and old quilts, fills the Grand Gallery at Memorial Art Gallery. A one-man show by contemporary textile artist Michael James fills an ancillary space. Thirty-six small quilts are interspersed throughout the first floor (they're actually displayed on the floor! Weird?), commissioned of regional quilt makers who were instructed to interpret a work of art in the permanent collection through their textile medium. MAG is covered in covers!

We live in the middle of a hotbed of quilting activity. The Genesee Valley Quilt Club founded here in 1936 has more than 300 members. The Kenan Quilters Guild just up the road in Lockport, Niagara County, has hosted a national juried biennial show for the last 40 years. The Ithaca Quilters Guild Biennial is 16 years old. Genesee Country Museum in Mumford installed a huge quilt show that's been on view in their art gallery for at least two years. There's a big quilt show in Cooperstown, an international show in Waterloo, and quite a prestigious national juried exhibit and weeklong symposium in Auburn. I recently reviewed that exhibit for this newspaper. I've also written reviews of quilt shows installed at nearly every college art center in Upstate New York during the past dozen years, and to some degree, I have loved every single quilt I've ever seen.

So when I walked into our premier art museum, I couldn't help thinking, "Why is MAG installing another quilt show? This had better be great!" It isn't.

This show was organized and sent to us from the Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There are at least three major quilt collectors living within a hundred-mile radius of Rochester with collections that equal or surpass the one on view. Why did MAG go so far afield to import a show that's only so-so? Aren't there rental fees, additional transportation, packing, and insurance costs on such exhibits? The exhibit does come with a book to sell, but published material about quilts could blanket this city. Or could it be that our primary art museum has such a thin curatorial staff that they are hard pressed to put together such an exhibit themselves?

If this museum quilt survey show is to live up to its title (the earliest quilt on view was made in 1825; where did they get 200 years in the show title?), how could the quilts of Gee's Bend not be included? Without exception, the African-American unschooled women of this tiny Alabama backwater have produced some of the most exciting quilt art of the past century. There are a couple of works by black women from Alabama. They don't come up to the level of Gee's Bend quilts - but then, not many do.

MAG has posted small statements of quilt myth and fact throughout the exhibit. I found them to be incomplete and misleading, and I know that our major museum is worthy of better.

In fact, that's my biggest gripe about this show. The installation of this show is gorgeous. But as for the meat, it just isn't there. 

Wild by Design: 200 Years of Innovation and Artistry in American Quilts

Through March 16

Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.

276-8900, mag.rochester.edu