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On View

The Quilts of Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill

June 13th, 2024 – February 8th, 2025

Florida State University’s School of Dance and the Museum of Fine Arts are delighted to announce “The Quilts of Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill.” Conceived and developed by School of Dance Professor Anjali Austin, the exhibition highlights quilts designed and crafted by her maternal grandmother, Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill, a Tallahassee native.

Mrs. Gussie Beatrice Arnold Hill was born in Leon County, Florida, on October 4, 1912. The eldest of twelve children, she would go on to marry Reverend Gus Ward Hill in 1932 in adulthood, and together, they had one daughter and one granddaughter, Anjali Austin. Mrs. Hill was an entrepreneur, an excellent cook and baker, a spiritual leader of her community, and a prolific and expert quilter. While previous generations may have sewed several quilts in this collection, the majority were hand-cut, pieced, and stitched by Mrs. Hill herself.   

Anjali Austin, a Professor of Dance at FSU, is now the caretaker of this collection. By interviewing family members, researching quilt histories and practices, and reflecting on her relationships to these textiles, Professor Austin has traced her African American and Indigenous heritage and culture through techniques and designs displayed in the quilts and the oral histories passed down with them. This project also includes a performance by Professor Austin based on these quilts and her family lineage titled Live Oak, to be hosted by the School of Dance in the Nancy Smith Fichter Dance Theatre on October 3, 2024. 

Purchase Live Oak Tickets

HOMO SARGASSUM

September 9th, 2024 to March 8th, 2025

In partnership with the TOUT-MONDE Art FOUNDATION and Winthrop King Institute, the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts is thrilled to announce HOMO SARGASSUM. In this exhibition, twenty-five Caribbean artists consider the human-induced adverse environmental effects of sargassum in Florida and the Caribbean, where sargassum takes on metaphoric roles to address the social and historical atrocities of the Middle Passage. As guests drift through the exhibition, the work invites them to imagine a new human-nature symbiosis that transcends the existing barriers between humans and the environment. 

Artists include Minia Biabiany, Camille Chedda, Ronald Cyrille, Nicolas Derné, Morel Doucet, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Felder + Felder, Billy Gérard Frank, Guy Gabon, Gwladys Gambie, Sheldon Green, Annabel Guérédrat, Jordan Harrison, Nadia Huggins, Dominique Hunter, Deborah Jack, Mirtho Linguet, Louisa Marajo, Medhi Michalon, Joiri Minaya, Ricardo Ozier-Lafontaine, María Isabel Rueda, Oneika Russell, Henri Tauliaut, and Caecilia Tripp.

Presented by the TOUT-MONDE Art FOUNDATION in partnership with the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts and the Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, this project is sponsored in part by the State of Florida through the Division of Arts and Culture, InPulse, a program of Rubis Mécénat; Holdex Environment; Société Anonyme de la Raffinerie des Antilles; Direction of Cultural Affairs of the French Ministry of Culture in Guadeloupe, Étant donnés, a program of Villa Albertine, Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation; and individual support from Sarah Arison, Sophia Budianto and Ian Dominguez, and Samir Agili.