Weaving Dreams showcases handmade quilts and other textile artifacts selected from the oeuvre of quilting artist and Lucyle Hook Professor of English, Professor of Africana Studies at Barnard, Dr. Kim F. Hall, curated alongside pieces by her mother Vera P. Hall, and Barnard alum Carter Watts’ 25 in the Milstein Lobby and throughout the Barnard Library from October 2025 through June 2026.
Inspired by Zora Neale Hurston’s legacy and the College’s commemoration of “100 years of Black Students at Barnard,” Weaving Dreams invites viewers to interact with an array of textile works that speak to the experiences of Black women in academia across many generations. In addition to Professor Hall’s quilts, the exhibition incorporates digital stories about style as it has been practiced by Black students Barnard over many decades, and a visual display of iconic styles, from 1925 to present.
The exhibition title takes as its inspiration a letter from a quote from Zora Neale Hurston in a 1925 letter to Alain Locke, where she alludes to “our business of dream weaving that we call writing.” Her use of ‘dream weaving” to describe the act of creating as a communal endeavor inspires us to think about the ways Black creators, particularly at Barnard, move between the quotidian activities that sustain Black community and their personal moments of creativity: our “weaving,” whether it be writing or textile arts is the manifestation of our dreaming, both collective and individual.
In collaboration with Professor Hall, Barnard 2025 graduate Carter Watts showcases a community quilting project, “The Story We Sew,” emerging from workshops she led in Spring 2025 at Barnard’s Design Center with the Office of Community Engagement & Inclusion— bringing together students, staff, and faculty, as well as local residents of Morningside Heights and West Harlem, such as members of Lifeforce in Later Years (LiLY.) Funded by the Campus Compact Newman Civic Fellowship, Carter’s work embodies her conviction that providing peers and neighbors an opportunity to share their personal stories and engage with the ancestral practices of quilting, serves to counter polarization and isolation on campus while strengthening participants’ sense of being part of a community.
Read the gallery text and preview the works in our exhibition catalog.
Upcoming Events
Weaving Dreams, Quilting Community panel - January 29, 2026, 6pm
Spring Trunk Show - Date TBD
Past Events
Workshop with Carter Watts - December 12, 2025
Opening Night on October 3rd, 2025
Carter Watts and Kim F. Hall looking at “Harriet, Our Spy” by Kim F. Hall
Collaborators:
Africana Studies
Barnard Library & Barnard Archives
Center for Engaged Pedagogy
Community Engagement and Inclusion
Dance Department
Design Center
Digital Humanities Center
Milstein Exhibitions
Movement Lab
The Zora Neale Hurston Centennial Committee
Peter Wadsorth, Art Handlers Collective
Team:
Miriam Neptune, Director of Milstein Exhibitions
Mengxi Xin GSAPP ‘27, Milstein Exhibitions Graduate Assistant
Olutomisin Fasosin ‘25, Milstein Exhibitions Student Assistant
Khepera Lyons-Clark ‘24, Design Center Post-Bacc Fellow
Special Thanks:
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, Dean of Barnard Library
Felicia Reid, Assistant to the Dean
Weaving dreams logos by Khepera Lyons-Clark, BC '24.