Celebrate the beauty and vibrancy of American quilts in a special exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Quilts and Color spotlights nearly fifty quilts with bold palettes and inventive designs from the acclaimed Pilgrim/Roy Quilt Collection. Influenced by twentieth century art developments such as abstraction, optical art, and the color field movement, Paul Pilgrim and Gerald Roy collected quilts from the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries with similarly bold and striking designs.

The exhibition begins with the vividly colored quilts that first drew the collectors' attention and started their life-long passion. Exploring principles of color theory, the exhibition's sections focus on color contrasts, vibrations, mixtures, gradations, and harmonies in the quilt designs. The exhibition examines innovative optical effects through the use of shape and color, as well as creative variations of traditional quilt patterns. Quilts and Color concludes with a nod to the artistic vision of quilt makers and highlights artists who worked outside standard patterns and designs.