Weaving Dreams Exhibition

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.

Carter Watts will return to campus as a visiting artist in October 2025, to share the story of the community quilt, and conduct workshops that engage current students and the public. 

Carter Watts and Kim F. Hall looking at “Harriet, Our Spy” by Kim F. Hall

Collaborators: 

Africana Studies 

Barnard Center for Research on Women

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.